Darkness there and nothing more
by Ju-dou
Summary: VERY Modern AU. How well does Mary really know the contents of her husband's heart and can she stand by him as their lives crumble?
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: And now for something completely different…very modern, very AU and very Mary and Richard. So, I have spent some time debating whether to post this or not but I thought hey, why not? If a few people enjoy it that's more than good enough for me and it's a helluva a lot of fun to write! It also marks my first exploration into an approximation of smut __**covers head with bag**__. So anyway, I am very very nervous, so comments much appreciated. The most mahoosive thanks to my beautiful beta, mrstater for her endless help and encouragement and to jadeandlilac for her always enthusiastic cheerleading._

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><p><em>Our almost-instinct almost true.<em>

Richard ascended the staircase, one hand on the white banister, the sounds of the party diminishing into white noise behind him. He undid an extra button on his shirt; he had drunk more than he had for weeks but they deserved this night out, especially here, in the home of someone he was well within his rights to look down on. Eyeing the rigid formulaic décor as he reached the top of the stairs he smirked slightly as he thought of the sheer elegance and originality his own wife brought to their home – and without the help of an extortionate interior designer.

His wife. She looked beautiful tonight, as she always did, every head in the room turning to look at her when they walked in, the shimmery fabric of the designer dress seeming to enhance every asset of her slender figure. The light danced on her smooth skin and he'd found himself taking a sharp gasp of breath as he felt the curve of her waist beneath his hand when she turned to smile at him during a particularly dull conversation.

He watched her. He, who commanded attention in the boardroom, who could shout over and above anyone of any station, was reduced to silence at her side. He was more than willing to allow her to dazzle, to shine as she brushed her hair away from her face to display the diamond earrings that had cost tens of thousands of pounds. He was the supporting act, she the star, at every occasion, and it made him shine a little brighter, his star ascend somewhat higher in people's estimations. Not that he cared what they thought. Oh he was proud of her, so very proud but it was the reassuring hand in his, the gentle curve of her lips, every knowing look and raised eyebrow that sustained him through any long and boring function.

Richard rapped lightly on the door that he remembered being the bathroom.

"Mary?"

She opened it part way, observing him with a raised eyebrow and a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

"Darling, do you make a habit of pursuing women to the bathroom?"

"Not women," he replied. "You."

"Oh I see. Ladies then," she pursed her lips and nodded, the door still half closed so she had not quite stepped out into the corridor.

His eyes flicked over her face and rested on her lips, the corner of his mouth raised into a smile that deepened the dimple in his cheek.

"Are you going to keep me standing here all night, _Lady _Mary?"

"Not all night…" she said leaning forward and taking hold of the front of his shirt, drawing him to her so their lips were barely touching. "Only until it becomes unbearable."

"It's unbearable now," he whispered into her mouth before pressing his lips to hers.

His hand clasped the small of her back and pressed her tightly against him as they stumbled into the bathroom and shut the door behind them. He twisted his hand behind him and fumbled with the lock until he heard a reassuring click, his lips never leaving hers as he deepened the kiss, tasting her, every familiar sweet sensation flooding through him. She did not yield in his grasp, ever a match for him and Mary reached up and crossed her arms around his neck as he pushed her against the wall. She moaned quietly with the little breath his passionate kiss left and moved her hands down past the defined muscles in his upper back and then lower, pulling him closer so she could feel the heat between them.

His hand reached up to her shoulder and his fingers gently smoothed and circled the skin around her collarbone before slipping beneath the strap of the dress and pushing it loose. Richard's moist lips met her neck and Mary felt a shiver of pleasure traverse the length of her body; he never lost the power to arouse the most intense sensations in her, even when they were arguing, especially when they were arguing. This was just as sweet, this frantic forbidden desire that had found them in many a compromising position when perhaps they ought to have been behaving more like chaste adults.

They were a handsome couple, she knew that, she knew people admired them and courted their company. Mary knew too that she was graceful and elegant, beautiful, but Richard was a rough diamond and without him she would not be able to cast quite so strong a light. He inflamed her; he stoked the fire and ignited a flame that she sometimes doubted she could control at all. He gave her courage and the protection his love cast around her was something she had never experienced before. When she was with Richard, especially when they were like this, every facet, every chink in her character was revealed and he loved and made love to it all. He loved every fault, every flaw, every selfish act or desire, he _knew_ her, every piece of darkness and he lived there, in every shadow even whilst enjoying the light.

Mary felt his teeth graze her neck and a flutter of breath escaped her lips as he continued to kiss all the way down to where the dress had now fallen away to her breast. His tongue was hot and she arched her back slightly as he traced over her skin, his hand reaching up to remove the other strap so that her dress fell around her feet and pooled on the floor.

"Quite unbearable?" he asked as he brought his lips back up to meet hers again, his hands resting beneath her ribs so he could almost span her waist.

"Yes." She whispered back, undoing the buttons down the front of his shirt and tugging the belt away from his trousers with a hasty practiced ease.

He kissed her harder, deeper and his fingers dug into her hips as he pulled her towards him and she felt their skin meet.

"You do know there is no woman here or anywhere who is more beautiful than you," Richard said into her ear as he stepped out of his trousers.

"You don't need to resort to flattery to have your way with me, Richard." She smiled, kissing the hard angle of his cheekbone. "We have two children after all."

"Would you like another?" he teased.

She kissed him and let her hand clasp the back of his head so she could feel the perspiration on the nape of his neck. Her elbow knocked into the heated towel rail so she winched. Richard took hold of her hips and guided her across the large room so they were wedged between a sink and a cupboard. It was almost unbearably humid and she felt light headed as he took hold of the back of her thighs and pulled her up so her legs were wrapped around him, her back digging into the wall. She could feel nothing but the kiss that seemed to dive into her very soul as she strove to bring him nearer, deeper, until a gasp of pleasure escaped her lips and she heard him moan her name in her ear. Mary's nails dug into his shoulder blades and she let her neck arch back so he could kiss the exposed vulnerable skin there. Oh, she loved him, all of him, all of the light, all of the dark, and especially _this._

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><p>The air was thick and still, suffocating. In the bed the child threw off the sheet and opened his eyes to look at the undulating shadows on the ceiling. The room was bathed in a silvery darkness and all the familiar objects comforted and closed in around him as he swung his legs over the side and tiptoed to the window. He had pulled the blackout blind up when he went to bed so that he could see the light die away as he drifted to sleep, reluctantly parting with the world and keeping it in his eye line simultaneously. The boy's chest swelled happily as he eased the blind up a little further and looked down into the garden, light pollution casting it in a slightly surreal haze, the happy jumble of shrubbery freely entwined around discarded toys. The garden was his place, the children's place, its very nature seemed stubbornly immune to landscaping and the only construction was the half finished tree house nestling in a tree near the bottom. He reached up and tugged at the back of his pajama shirt, which was sticky with moisture, it would surely be another hot day tomorrow. They could turn on the sprinklers again, reduce the lawn to a mire of mud and sludge, it was a cheerful thought.<p>

The child sighed and rubbed his sticky forehead, his blond hair darkened with perspiration. He let out a contented little sigh but as he did so a breath caught in his throat and he narrowed his eyes towards the wall at the very bottom of the garden. The blackness that lay there seemed to build and intensify until he could hardly make out anything at all. The light on the swimming pool sparkled in the corner of his eye but he did not look away as he made out what was distinctly a figure. A person. Someone was in the garden, near the wall but advancing forwards. He clapped his hand over his mouth and felt a hot prickle spread across his forehead and down his cheeks, rising in goose pimples all over his arms. The figure multiplied and a larger scene expanded out from the edges of the garden; almost like the Magic Eye pictures he was wont to make himself cross eyed trying to do. There were more people, men, wearing black and holding something – guns. This time he almost screamed.

He jerked away from the window, turning around and sinking quickly to the floor, his back against the lattice framework of the radiator cover. For several seconds he was paralyzed, his hands resting on his knees, numb and stiff so they did not feel like his own. Finally he bent his head and crawled from the room, slowly, ever so slowly, the house seeming to shiver around him. On the landing he continued to crawl and nudged open the door of his sister's room with his head. She was asleep, in her customary style, on her front with her arm hanging over the edge. When he went to speak he found his mouth was so dry the sound was a croak. The pulse beat in his neck, flickering and trembling beneath the delicate surface of his skin. He felt sick and strangely exhilarated.

"Imogen," he hissed. "Immy, wake up, wake up."

She did not wake so he tried again, reaching up from where he knelt on the floor and giving her back a little shake. This time she moaned and pursed her rosy lips in a perfect bow, swatting a tangle of hair from her face and screwing up her eyes without opening them.

"Immy!"

She moaned and finally opened her eyes to look into the white face of her brother beside her. She did not start and struggled up almost cheerfully, allowing him in one quick movement to take her into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist and wound her arms around his neck like a monkey as he held onto her.

"We'll go to Mummy and Daddy's room."

She nodded as if she were routinely woken in the middle of the night and carried from her bed.

They were halfway back across the landing when it felt like an explosion had occurred. Lights, shouts and a great drumming of black feet on the black stairs. A wave of darkness surged towards the children and then it was upon them. They were engulfed and grabbed by firm hands, torn from each other and carried away. The boy screamed, he screamed and screamed. It was a piercing sound and the female officer held onto him tightly, with his back against her waist as he fought like a wild animal, his arms outstretched towards his sister whose mouth hung open, her eyes wide.

"Felix," she whispered, too terrified to cry.

It was Felix's scream that threw Mary into a white blast of exploding stars and she didn't take a breath as a black masked face looked down on her and she was wrenched from the bed. The room filled with people; shouting, demanding, guns held aloft. It was a nightmare; it had to be a nightmare. Her husband was being held down on the bed clad only in boxer shorts, his arms twisted behind his back, his shoulders disabled by what seemed like dozens of pushing hands. She was born quickly from the room, looking back briefly as Richard was jerked upwards and pushed face first into the wall, his neck twisted to one side as around the room drawers were pulled out and cupboards torn open. She could not speak or shout or scream, her ribcage so constricted that the force of it made it seem as if her heart were being drawn out through her mouth. She fell with relief into the arms of her children, who were seated side by side on Imogen's little white bed, their faces ashen. The woman officer looked down on them and remained stiffly standing guard as Mary pressed their faces into her chest and they clawed and clung to her until she held them both with difficulty in her lap.

Richard fought. He pulled and tugged and found himself possessed with a rage, a feral desire to escape that seemed to fill his head with fire. Every muscle surged alive, every nerve sparked as he put his considerable force into breaking from these people who seemed determined to dislocate his arms. He did not register who they were, he did not hear what they were shouting in his ears or the papers and identification cards a suited woman flashed in his face. He was in the school playground again and his back was against a brick wall that smelt of urine, he was spitting into the face of his tormentor and thrusting his knee between his legs. He was in the boxing ring; sweat running down the crease between his shoulder blades, the metallic bite of blood between his teeth.

"Mary!" He yelled and he clenched his teeth in the face of the officer who was pushing the gun into his back, forcing his face so hard into the wall that it stung.

"Shut up!"

"Where is my wife?" Richard shouted, still now, all the tension focused in the twisting set of his mouth. "Where are my children?"

He felt the handcuffs close around his wrists as he was propelled from the room and onto the landing, inscrutable expressions watching him from underneath helmets. _I am being arrested by the police. _This thought crystalized for a moment in his mind before being flung aside once more as a small whirlwind flew into him and clung there.

"Daddy!"

Imogen's tear streaked face looked up at him, her long fringe falling across her flushed cheeks.

"Imogen!"

Mary ran forwards but the little girl was seized by a police officer first and thrust into her mother's arms. Felix clung to the edge of Mary's nightdress and his eyes locked to Richard's for a moment; confused, frightened, surely scarred for life by such an impossible trauma.

"Richard, what is happening?" Mary asked, her voice shaking and he found he could not sustain her gaze.

"Take them away!" the man holding Richard barked.

"No, Daddy!" Imogen screamed and Mary could not hold her tightly enough as the little girl grabbed her brother's hand and twisted away.

Both children broke free and with speed and agility darted forwards to hold onto Richard, kicking and struggling as two officers descended on them as they grappled dangerously at the top of the stairs. Mary screamed but the woman pinned her arms behind her back so she too was forced to struggle. This time Richard lost control as Felix was seized around the waist and lifted into the air. Richard reared back and knocked the man holding him off balance so that the officer lost his footing and slipped on the tread at the top of the stairs, rolling and crashing against the banister as a cry went up. Richard quickly found the weight of several men on top of his back and a gun pressed to his temple. Mary screamed again and the noise rang in his ears. Felix's landing had been cushioned by his captor and he scrambled back up the stairs where two ununiformed men closed in, taking an arm each and dragging him back to the top as Richard was forced down the wide stair case in the opposite direction, his head pushed down so he could not meet his son's eyes.

This was a nightmare; it had to be.

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><p>Cora was beside herself, so much so that Robert had virtually put the Valium tablet in her mouth himself before shutting the door and returning to answer a telephone that would not stop ringing. He had switched off the twenty-four hour news channel but someone else had switched it back on and it displayed a wobbly helicopter view of his daughter's house and garden. He pulled the plug from the wall. When he had been woken by the phone call his heart had skipped a beat and fear had plunged into his stomach, clenching and grasping inside until he heard Mary tell him that she and the children were fine.<em> Thank God.<em> The rest, of course, had caused a quite different emotion, an overpowering rage that still seemed to be beating in the form of an ache around his temples. He had ordered a car and they were on their way, she couldn't drive, not in that state and besides the police had taken the cars – why? Robert could barely contemplate quite what was going on and he refused to spend more than a moment listening to the minimal information being repeated by a supercilious news anchor.

He looked at his watch; an hour, maybe two and they would be here.

"Robert?"

He turned to see his mother standing in the doorway.

"Robert, I would like to know exactly what is going on. I fear I may have suffered a small cerebral event – I switch on the television and what do I see?" Her eyes widened. "Richard! _Well_, I think; I _am_ used to seeing that man on the television, but not solely in a pair of underpants, being led away by the police. The shock, I felt quite faint!"

"Cora is lying down."

"I'm sure she is." Violet said, lowering herself cautiously into a chair as if an image of Richard half naked and in handcuffs might appear on the blank television screen at any moment.

"I know as much as you, as much as Sky News!" Robert shook his head, clenching and unclenching his hands behind his back.

"I have unplugged the telephone at the Dower House. I daren't even go back there, the village will no doubt be swarming with reporters, with those ghastly vans with satellites on the top!"

"Let's hope not, Mama."

Violet emitted a short laugh before pursing her lips. "For goodness sake, Robert, ring for some tea."

Robert did as he was bidden before turning to the table by the window where the collection of photographs of his daughters and grandchildren were displayed. He sighed and touched the silver framed studio portrait of Felix and Imogen; he could hardly contemplate what they had been through the previous night. He imagined Felix, eight years old, with his fiercely protective nature, his gentle bond with the little sister. What had he thought as the house filled with police, had they woken him in his bed? Mary had intimated that the children had seen everything and he shuddered at the thought, at the image of them in their pajamas surrounded by armed police. They looked happily out from the photograph in his hand. Imogen with her silky blond bob, a red bow clipping her fringe from her eyes, her dimpled cheeks and trusting smile. Robert put the picture back down roughly.

"Those poor children," Violet sighed.

"Please." Robert frowned.

Please, what? _Please, do not let their lives fall apart._


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thank you so much for everyone who reviewed or alerted this story. I know Mary/Richard can be a hard sell so if you're enjoying it I am very very pleased! Comments as always gratefully received. Hugest thanks go once more to my wonderful beta, who is a darling and I love her!_

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><p><em>All my soul within me burning.<em>

Mary drifted in and out of the warm comfort of sleep, a heavy haze settling in front of her eyes as she allowed her head to rest back in the seat. The shimmer of a day destined to be hot span by outside the window, she could not recall if she had seen the dawn, one moment they had been cloaked in the dark interior of the Bentley and the next it was a new day. Every so often a sharp pain in her chest reminded her of reality and the full power of her recollections came rushing with a crushing force so that she was forced to open her eyes. The motorway faded out of focus in front of her again and she felt as if she were being battered against rocks, thrown about on a tumultuous ocean to be plunged into the suffocating weight of a wave and cast against an unforgiving shore. Then warmth would come again and she would forget and it would be gone, she would be drowned, an ocean of relief pressing down on her, rendering coherent thought impossible. This cycle seemed to continue to repeat itself with a tireless ferocity and she begged for exhaustion to take over, for that great empty heaviness to persist.

When sleep came it was not empty. She dreamt, dreams that seemed tentatively in her control, in her power to direct. She thought of Richard and for a moment the memory was there with her inhabiting it with all the acuity of the actual event. Her hand in his at the altar as he slides the wedding band over her finger, every feeling she felt at that moment present and yet slightly removed. A dream, this is a dream but let it continue. He kisses her and she feels the rough tremble of his lips, the slight shake in his hands as he places them around her waist. Richard is nervous and he is happy, very happy as he draws back and she sees the full light of his smile fill every line in his face. She is complete and they are indomitable. Mary feels that every hole in her heart is full and she knows – she _knows _for certain – that together they are unconquerable.

_They dance and she relaxes absolutely for the first time that day, his hand entwines in hers, her wedding and engagement rings catching the light. The band plays but it is distant and her heart surges as his lips rest close to her ear, his hand at her back pulls her in closer and she does not resist, she will never resist. _

"_Will these people ever leave?" He whispers and she can see that lilting smile on his lips without looking._

"_I rather think they came for the party, darling."_

"_Let them stay by all means, the reception I have in mind is for two guests only."_

_She smiles and her fingers inch from his shoulder to smooth the skin of his neck, just above his collar, where she feels his pulse fluttering relentlessly. _

"_Well technically we are three." Mary replies, allowing her eyes to meet his as they continue to dance without missing a step._

"_I will make an exception there," he replies and moves his hand away from her back to rest on her still flat stomach. "I love you."_

Mary's neck jerked and she grasped the side of the seat. The windscreen seemed very close and the cold air from the air conditioning had made her throat dry and sore. The driver eyed her for a moment, started to speak but thought better of it and narrowed his eyes at the boot of the motionless car in front. They had hit the morning rush hour traffic, the world was continuing, the world cared not for what they had been through. She swallowed painfully and looked into the rear view mirror and saw that the children were still asleep; Felix slumped to one side so that his face was pressed to the pillow leant against the window, his mouth hanging open. Imogen was bowed completely forward, her arms hanging down in front of her in an attitude of surrender. Mary undid her seatbelt and leant into the back seat, easing the little girl up so that she was resting on the headrest of the booster chair.

She could not think about it, she could not relive it, not in this confined space, where the very thought of the horror they had just experienced would press in. She wanted to lower the window but the prospect of exhaust fumes adding to her existing nausea put her off. The traffic inched forwards and Mary was possessed by the mad urge to wrench the steering wheel away and drive up the hard shoulder, away from this, away from everything, away from Richard. _Richard. _Tears stung her eyes and she clasped her hands together in her lap to stop them from shaking.

She was both desperate to be out of the car and horrified at the prospect of the journey's end, of arriving at Downton, of her father's still face, her mother's anguished flurries of emotion. She hardly dared imagine what Granny would say. What did it matter? What did any of it matter? When Mary looked down she realized she'd been digging the point of her nail into the back of the hand and the red indent there seemed a very pathetic representation of the churning emotion gripping her.

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><p>His eyes roved over the thin plastic mattress on the narrow bench and he wanted nothing more than to rip it apart, tear to shreds the only thing in this room that he could gain purchase on. The bare white cell seemed to close in, press against the sides of his head and intensify the pounding ache that made his scalp feel too tight over his skull. They would think him mad; he had already behaved like a wild animal. Perhaps he was an animal. <em>Fight, you always fight. <em>And yet that was not who he was, he was verbally aggressive yes, forceful and unrelenting in his business but he was not that wiry hot eyed boy ripping his way through the streets of Edinburgh anymore, clawing his way from the brink, upwards from the mire to something unimaginable. Or was he? Perhaps that boy had never gone. He seemed to smile back at Richard now, bloodied knuckles and eyes that held no mercy.

What was the first thought that had come to his mind after he had realized he was being cautioned by the police? _They know, they know about Edinburgh, the past is upon me. _And Richard felt relieved, he could not hide it, he had been relieved when he realized what the charges were. They could not make any of it stick. He almost laughed. It seemed less funny now, six hours since the first interrogation and still in this windowless prison. Graves reassured him but he was nervous, as he always was around Richard, as if he could smell a loose moral a mile off. He was a good solicitor, the very best money could buy and he would be sweating on behalf of his high profile client. Richard wanted to see Graves now, intimidate him with a menacing calm, anything to extinguish this powerless weight on his chest. They could keep him here for ninety-six hours without charge, just let them dare, he thought and he realized his teeth were bared. _Control yourself, Richard, you're not in Muirhouse now. _

He was not in Muirhouse. He wasn't eighteen stories up, hanging over the balcony, casting cigarette ash into a hungry wind. And he hadn't been there for a very long time, the damp sheets on the washing line flapping like frantic wings in his face as his soul seemed to stretch in an attempt to fill the empty space. It was green there and in every way the city of Edinburgh was beautiful for being full, this outpost was bleak for being surrounded by a society that was bowing and crumbling on a desolate prairie.

Richard thought of his life now, their London home, and how if he looked to his left he could see the brutalist tower blocks of the nearby council estate. The estate, like his own house, overlooked the wildest of the Royal Parks, that beautiful expanse of untamed greenery and those people, hanging over the balconies smoking, saw the same views he did. Did it make them feel more alone? The way it made him feel when he looked from his vantage point in another city, another council estate, so many years ago? How much circumstances change our perspective, Richard thought. He could never see the park at the bottom of his garden as bleak. He was not alone anymore.

His children loved that park, they loved the hollowed out tree that they could stand inside, a burrow with no roof, Imogen pretending to be an owl and hooting with a rather alarming degree of accuracy. Felix would be the mouse, allowing his sister to jump from the tree with her father's help and grab hold of his back whilst he writhed around. The children understood nature. They understood when the park was closed at night and they could hear shots, the sounds of the weakest deer being felled for the yearly cull. At their age Richard had known much the same thing, that the weak must be sacrificed, that the strong will triumph but he did not have the savage beauty of the natural world to thank for that revelation.

He had walked through the neighboring council estate one evening when Mary and the children were in Yorkshire. He did not know why and it did not cross his mind that it would be foolish, that he should be concerned or even afraid for his safety. God knows he told the nanny to never, _never _take the children through the estate. The flats loomed ahead of him above the darkened expanse of trees and he felt a taste of Muirhouse on his lips, a stale taste.

It was a summer evening and gathered in a crescent on a rotting bench were a group of weathered, yellow-eyed men, younger or older than him he could not tell. They did not acknowledge him and the sweet distinctive smell of marijuana smoke tingled inside Richard's nostrils, he smiled a little at this, it had been a long time since he had experienced that aroma and it was comforting for being a forgotten familiarity. He crossed the road, leaving their garbled conversations behind and walked past the bus stop. He came to a stop beside a bench on the edge of the path that curved up the hill to the next swath of tower blocks. Richard looked back at the long foreboding buildings that ran at parallel angles across the green; they were beautiful in their way, lights illuminating architecture that was nothing if not distinctive.

He was less than a mile from his own front door and yet it was another world, a cold dystopia that sought to wrap a warm fist around his heart and remind him. _You do not hate it here, you even feel a little at home. _Mary would be horrified to think of him there and the thought of her snapped Richard from his reverie. This cell, Muirhouse, the person he had been; it was all disgusting when pressed close to her. Beautiful, Mary, exquisite and wonderfully privileged, raised and nurtured by a life Richard was barely able to pretend to understand. She had felt alone, trapped by rolling hills and a lush cultivated landscape, imprisoned in the walls of a palace. He leant forwards against the cinderblock wall of the cell and thought of dancing in the Great Hall at Downton during their wedding reception, of her relaxing in his hold and of the way it all seemed a dream. Richard Carlisle, who had used his mother's dustpan and brush to remove needles from the lift before escorting his sister to school, dancing with the daughter of an Earl in a place more beautiful and strange than any fantasy.

"_Would it be trite to say this is the happiest day of my life?" He asks and she smiles and strokes his cheek._

_Richard feels as if she is wiping away every tear that ever fell._

"_Not if you mean it."_

"_I have never spoken a truer word," he replies and as he looks into her eyes he wants her to know and understand everything about him._

"_The only thing that would make this moment more perfect is if it were taking place upstairs. Alone." A glint shines in her eyes but at that moment he does not want to joke, to tease, to allow the more base human desires to take over._

"_I mean it, Mary," his voice drops and his face is very close to hers. "I am not an aristocrat but there is no-one who will cherish you more and the truth is all you will ever hear from me."_

_Her eyes shine a little then and she traces a line at the corner of his jaw, her face set but not unkind._

"_Richard, don't make promises you may not be able to keep."_

Richard pressed his forehead against the wall, laying his palms flat against the cool surface. She would never forgive him. He would never forgive himself.

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><p>Felix lay looking up at the underside of the canopy above the bed. He regretted shouting and throwing his rucksack against the wall. In hindsight these actions had been both unnecessary and upsetting for his mother and he bitterly regretted anything he did to upset her. They had not needed to say anything, the way they had looked at them, the small shakes of their heads and the sadness in their eyes had spoken volumes and Felix had not liked it. <em>Don't you say anything about my Dad, don't you dare! <em>He cringed inwardly now and felt a wave of heat color his cheeks. He had been rude to his grandparents and Daddy would not like that. He rolled over onto his front and buried his face in the freshly laundered pillowcase, allowing his body to go limp so it almost felt he was sinking into the mattress. He wanted to go back in time, far back, to be a baby who knew nothing of life but being carried and coddled.

He could have warned Daddy. If he'd been quicker then they could have escaped, run away into the night, through the park into the woods and hidden, the bright eyes of the deer flashing in the dark. He had been too slow and they had taken his father away, shouting and protesting. He had shivered so hard his teeth chattered inside his head but he was not cold and when they sat in the back of the police car, Felix had taken his mother's hand in his and the shake had vanished. Imogen had been sick, a sulphurous odor quickly fermenting around them as the windows were lowered and a cool rush of air caressed his face as the car accelerated. Tissues were hastily passed back through the grill that separated them from the driver and Felix took them from Mary's hands as she began to tremble too much to do anything other than hold Imogen in her lap. He wiped the vomit and saliva from his sister's mouth and neck, tucking a wet strand of hair behind her ear.

He would have to go and apologize to all of them but not now, now he wanted to be alone. Felix tried to empty his mind, to exclude every intrusive and unpleasant thought. He wished he had his bag. He turned his face as it became increasingly difficult to breath whilst having his nose and mouth pressed against the pillow. He tried to think of things he could draw when he had his sketchpad and pencils. He could draw this bed, the columns that looked as if they were twisted as easily as a piece of candy, smooth and polished to a shiny luster. Or the dressing table, he did not feel like drawing people, catching their living, moving imperfections, highlighting his own inability to snare their essence onto paper.

Imogen was the best likeness he'd captured, the profile of her cherubic face, the dimple in her cheek and the slight purse of her lips. He could not draw his father at all and the paper ended up being covered in the grey strands of the eraser that had scrubbed each pencil mark away. Whenever Felix tried his father looked scary, lined and strangely vacant. It was not what he saw, it was not what he felt when they were together, he felt like his father existed completely in those times he played with him. On paper a part of him seemed to fall away, he did not translate. _It is practice, _his mother smiled but Felix felt that however hard he practiced, however accomplished he became; he would not be able to recreate his father on paper.

Felix was told that he looked just like his father and he took this as a ringing compliment, a resounding endorsement of his own chances of succeeding at whatever he attempted. He walked a little taller holding his hand and he felt special, that was the most important thing Felix supposed, that his parents made him feel special. Whether he was being allowed to join his mother on a hack in the park or helping his father feed old documents into the shredder in his office, he felt that they were so inherently a part of each other that any activity was meaningful.

He could go riding, someone would have to come with him but he would feel calmer holding the reins, his knees bumping against the horse's middle. Of course he would not be able to go before the apology and the thought of this deflated the brief feeling of lightheartedness that the prospect of riding with his mother had promised. It wasn't that he was not sorry, he was, he was sorry for being rude, for hurting their feelings but he was mostly just sorry that Daddy was not here.

With a deep intake of breath Felix sat up and slid from the bed, leaning down and slipping his feet back into his trainers. _You must always apologise when you're in the wrong. _

"I'm sorry for being rude, Grandpapa, Grandmamma."

"Oh darling, apology accepted!" Cora said, taking his face between her cool hands and kissing his cheek.

"Where's my mum?"

"Your mother is lying down with Imogen," Robert said, resting his hand on his grandson's shoulder. "Perhaps you would like something to eat now?"

"I'm not hungry. I better go and see if they're okay," Felix replied.

"Let us take Isis for a walk, you can see them when we get back."

The boy nodded and accepted his grandfather's outstretched hand.

* * *

><p>Mary let the water pour in stinging droplets onto her face as she stood in the shower. It was comforting, the unrelenting stream and it seemed to promise some release. She had spoken to Graves, who could tell her nothing and she hung up on him in a fit of pique. She would have to go back to London, as much as she wished to pull the sheets over her head and remain hidden from the world. She must hold her head high, whatever Richard had done. What <em>had<em> he done? She could not pretend she thought him a model of virtue, she knew there was something very dark in his heart and yet she embraced it without understanding. He had not climbed to his position without a driving force that was fearsome. She trusted implicitly that there was nothing more important to Richard than her and the children, nothing he would not do to protect them. She thought of his earnest expression that day of their wedding, of his promise to always tell her the truth and even as he meant it then she knew it was a promise he could not keep. _For better, for worse. _

_Richard shuts the door of the bedroom that used to be hers and turns to smile at her. His cravat is loose around his neck and she smiles back. She smiles because they are alone and the day in all it's delirium and splendor has ended. They need not hear another sly remark, see another raised eyebrow as Richard says or does something that is considered unbecoming. Her family loves her and wants the best for her and she knows they believe Richard is not it, they do not know him and they don't know her. It hurts a little, the undertone of disapproval but not so much as to dampen her thirst and determination for them to succeed. Her husband reaches out and takes her hand, smoothing his thumb over her knuckles. _

"_And finally we are alone," he says._

"_I can't wait to get out of this dress," she sighs, before adding quickly, "That isn't to say I haven't enjoyed wearing it."_

"_I don't think I will object to you removing it."_

"_It is going to need to be a joint effort," she says turning around so he is looking at the porcelain skin at the back of her neck._

_Richard leans down and kisses the nape of her neck and Mary feels a flutter of pleasure. His masculine fingers struggle to find the small zip concealed beneath a delicate fold of lace running down the bodice of the gown. She watches him in the mirror so she can see the furrow of his brow; the fair hair smoothed back, his lips clenched together in concentration. Finally he manages it and Mary lets out a small sigh as his hands reach up to slip the lace from her shoulders, his lips resting against the hollow at the side of her neck. She takes his hand and draws it up around her to kiss his fingers._

"_Have I embarrassed you today?" He asks as she releases him and he slides his hands down her arms, guiding the lace sleeves away so the top of the gown falls around her waist to reveal an ivory basque. _

"_No more than usual," she replies, catching his hand and putting the tip of his finger in her mouth. "I'm teasing you," she adds when he doesn't reply._

"_Perhaps I'm feeling a little sensitive," he says, resting his chin over her shoulder for a moment before moving to undo the buttons on the front of his shirt, shrugging it from his shoulders._

"_You must not let them get to you. Stick with me and you'll soon be able to play the part of hereditary peer with an ease that will aggravate Granny to the point of apoplexy." _

"_I will certainly stick with you," Richard allows his hands to wander over her hips to guide the rest of the dress to the floor, the tips of his fingers caressing the sides of her thighs and lingering over the tops of her stockings._

_He plants a kiss on her shoulder and she leans back into his chest as he reaches round to rest his hands on her stomach._

"_When shall we tell them?" he asks and she hears the apprehension behind his slightly gruff tone._

_He is pleased, he has told her so, surprised but happy and Mary feels the prospect of telling her family is hanging over him. She is nervous too but stubborn and strong willed; she has defied them enough times in the past. Richard is not used to being openly disapproved of and it hurts him more than he is willing to let show. _

"_Not yet. Lets enjoy our honeymoon."_

_She places her delicate hands over his large rough ones and finds her breathing become shallow as Richard plants light kisses from her neck across her bare shoulder blade. She can teach him about cutlery, about titles, even how to ride a horse but he has taught her something much more. He has taught her there is freedom to be had, there is freedom to be ones self, to be raw and vulnerable, to hurt and to love. He tells her there is no trap that cannot be escaped if you are strong enough, and she is strong. He is such a powerful presence and yet he does not diminish her, he does not drown her out or dominate. She cares what her family thinks, of course she does, but she believes she can prove them wrong. They will never understand Richard; they have no concept of who he is. They see someone on the make, a social climber with a vulgar amount of material wealth, crowbarring his way into their lives. He has not forced his way into Mary's heart; it is as if he's always been there. _

_She turns around and she feels slightly breathless as she rests her hands on his warm chest, tilting her chin so their lips meet and he grips her tightly around the waist to pull her hard against him. She traces her hands down the soft hair of his chest and stomach and feels his skin tremble beneath her touch. She grabs the front of his trousers and tugs them down as the heat of his tongue fills her mouth. Mary pulls away from him and he catches her lip between his teeth so she gives a little gasp of excitement._

"_Are you going to tease me all night?" Richard asks, stepping out of his trousers and pulling off his socks._

"_Of course I am, darling," she confirms, giving him a gentle push in the chest so he falls back onto the bed._

_Mary straddles him and a loose wave of hair falls into her face. She takes hold of him around both wrists either side of his head and leans down to kiss him once more. She is intoxicated and there is nothing more than every living, breathing pulse of desire that surges between them._

Mary gave an involuntary shudder as the memory closed its door to her and she wrapped the towel around herself. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, inhaling the thick steam that seemed to coat her skin. She thought of the first time she met Richard, of his smooth appraising gaze, of the expression in his eyes that seemed to suggest a challenge. Mary was so very rarely challenged and she smiled at her reflection now as she thought of the way he had quickly disarmed her that evening during a glamorous if tedious charity ball. It was almost ten years since their first meeting and with each day she passed at his side she felt freer, more herself. She evolved within his capacious hold and there was nothing she could not show him of her character. The wedding night spent here in this bedroom, their future unfolding out of sight ahead of them, had found her unafraid. What she felt now was more than fear, what was to come too much to begin to unravel and what happened to cause it too dangerous to consider.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thank you to anyone who is reading this, comments greatly appreciated. So I love Rosamund. And modern!Rosamund is even more fun, so here is her first appearance in this verse. Tremendous thanks to my wonderful beta, source of much inspiration and endless guidance_

* * *

><p><em>I lie down in the shadow.<em>

Mary descended the wide staircase, the soft tread of each carpeted step easy and smooth underfoot. Imogen clung to her hand and looked up at her mother every now and then with a little frown knitted across her brow. A burning anxiety clung inside Mary's stomach but her features remained perfectly poised, her heels clicking with certainty on the stone at the bottom of the stairs.

"Are you leaving?" Cora asked, coming quickly into the hallway, her eyes wide as she glanced to the handbag in her daughter's hand.

"Yes, Mama. Graves called, I'm going to post Richard's bail."

"Mary!" Her mother exclaimed. "Can we talk about exactly what is going on before you drive off again?"

"We're flying," she replied, sweeping her hair from her face and avoiding her mother's despairing gaze. "Where's Felix? We must not keep the pilot waiting."

"Mary!"

"What, Mama? I don't know anything! All I know is that I need to go and be with my husband."

"You cannot take the children. Mary, be reasonable!" Cora said, her neck tensing as she struggled to control the pitch of her voice.

"Mummy?" Imogen said, tugging Mary's hand and looking up at her with a trembling bottom lip before bursting into tears.

With a sigh and sharp look at her mother she hoisted the little girl onto her hip and Imogen buried her face into her shoulder, hot tears trickling down inside the collar of Mary's blouse.

"You must leave them with us. Don't expose them to whatever is going on for goodness sake. Your father won't hear of it."

Mary looked up and her eyes narrowed in amazement. She sometimes wondered if her mother could hear herself, if she realized how it sounded to declare so shamelessly that her father could decree where she went and what she did, how they must all bow to his superior will as if he were a remarkably benevolent dictator. She was not a child. And yet she realized that on this occasion her mother was right. She could not take the children with her, to be trapped under the glare of every camera lens. And yet she could hardly bear to part with them so soon after what they had been through. Mary smoothed Imogen's hair behind her ear, feeling the girl's shuddering sobs come to a halt against her.

"Sweetheart, I need to leave you and your brother here with your grandparents so I can go and see Daddy."

"I want to come!" Imogen declared, her cheeks scarlet as she moved her head away from her mother's shoulder, her legs wrapping more tightly around her.

"Mum?"

Felix came running over to her with Isis at his heels, Robert following close behind.

"Mum, are you leaving us here?" Felix bit his lip and watched her, his fingers tugging at the hem of his polo shirt as his grandfather laid a hand on his shoulder.

"I have to, darling. I'm sorry, just for a night or two."

Felix nodded stiffly, before setting his face into a tremulous smile.

"It'll be fun, Immy, come on," he said, giving his sister's back a little rub. "You can ride your pony and Mummy will be back soon."

Mary lowered a sniffing Imogen to the ground and knelt down beside her, smoothing her face in her hands and replacing the clip in her hair to keep her long fringe from her eyes.

"Good girl," she smiled, swallowing the lump in her own throat and kissing the child's forehead.

She stood up and Felix hugged her tightly, pressing his face against her. The fervor of his embrace threatened to break a chip from her resolve and she gave the top of his golden head a kiss, before cupping his chin in her hand for a moment.

"Don't worry," she told him, wishing she could believe there was nothing to worry about.

Felix held her gaze and nodded again, taking Imogen's hand.

"Let's go play. I'll race you up the stairs!"

With a last look back at Mary, Imogen took the proffered hand before pulling away and taking advantage of the generous head start her brother gave her in their race. Once the dull thuds of the children's pounding feet on the stairs receded, Mary reached down and picked up her handbag from the floor. She realized she was clenching her teeth and closed her eyes briefly in an attempt to dismiss the rising tension remaining between those left. She could not stand the sadness in her father's eyes or the watery anxiety in her mother's, she did not want their pity and she felt as if they had been waiting to bestow it upon her. They had looked at her like this before, in the hospital after Richard had missed Imogen's birth. As if they were holding their breath and anticipating the moment when Richard would let her down irreparably and they would collect and repair the pieces. Well, she did not need repairing; she was not broken, not by a long way.

"I'd better wait outside," she said finally.

"Would you like me to come with you, my dear?"

"No, thank you, Papa. I will be quite alright."

She knew her tone was cooler than perhaps it should have been but she could not discuss it now, when she had no information, no defense to offer. Her father looked as if he too were resisting entering into a painful conversation and he put his arm around Cora's shoulder as they walked her to the door.

Mary did not look back as she was guided into the helicopter that had landed on the lawn, the rotor blades spinning ferociously above her head, a great whirling violence that felt inches from her skull. She raised her hand in a brief wave at her parents standing framed in the doorway of the house and then she closed her eyes and leant her head back in the seat. She only opened them once the stilted ascent had been completed and inclined her head to watch as the great house and it's grounds spread out below her, highlighted to a garish intensity by the sunlight of a cloudless sky. She longed to be deep in those woods, or on horseback at the drag hunt, relentlessly pursuing a prey that could not be caught, that did not exist. How Downton exhilarated and suffocated her in equal measure. The weight of expectations she could not or would not meet.

* * *

><p>Lady Rosamund Painswick was not accustomed to being kept waiting and with a small sigh she ran her finger over the edge of the marble mantelpiece. Dust. That girl would have to go; she could barely wipe a granite work surface without leaving an artistic cloud of smears. The shutters were closed and she had turned on a lamp to illuminate some of the oppressive gloom more suited to a winters evening than a summers afternoon. Finally she heard a roar of noise outside, the clamour of voices forcing their way into the silence. This time she inhaled deeply and expelled the breath with the little fury she allowed herself to feel; the paparazzi, they were beyond tiresome. She stepped out of the sitting room just as her niece and Richard burst in through the front door in a convulsion of flashes, flanked by a pair of minders who stood awkwardly in front of it as it was closed behind them, shutting out the salivating horde gathered outside the house.<p>

"Mary," she said, taking her shoulders and kissing her. "Hello, Richard," she offered him her cheek briefly before calling out to the woman hovering at the foot of the staircase. "Tea, Lorelein."

Mary thought she might cry and took her aunt's arm gratefully, allowing her to guide her onto a chaise lounge and settle opposite her with an expression that Mary knew amounted to empathy.

"I must have a shower," Richard announced, rubbing his sticky palms together, sweat standing across his grooved forehead.

The past twelve hours – had it only been twelve hours? – hung heavily beneath his eyes. He had felt soiled, even after he pulled off the white disposable jumpsuit and tugged on the clothes Mary had brought him. His own body odour seemed to fill his nostrils as he held her tightly under the impassive gaze of the custody Sergeant. Graves looked on, fidgeting with the clasp of his briefcase, shrinking away behind them as they faced the press outside the station. Cushioned either side by bodyguards they had ducked into the waiting car and he found Mary was squeezing his hand so tightly her nails were breaking his skin. Small red crescents stood out on the back of his hand and the moisture from his palm stung in the marks as he rubbed his knuckles.

"Yes of course, the guest bedroom on the first landing is ready," Rosamund dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

Mary avoided his eye before he turned away, a slight sinking of his shoulders as he did so, the back of his shirt stuck to his skin in patches with perspiration. Mary lowered her face into her hands, the tips of her elbows digging into her thighs through her jeans as she felt all the weight collect in her open palms. Her long dark hair fell in a curtain over her face and Mary could feel her aunt's knowing gaze pointedly upon her. Rosamund had long been dispensing advice to Mary, all of it unsolicited, much of it with the sole purpose of self preservation. Protecting herself was not something Mary was unused or adverse to and for the first twenty-one years of her life it had been something of a motto. She had changed: if Richard or the children were not safe, neither was she. Rosamund, she was almost sure, must understand that, at least to a degree.

One thing she could say for her aunt was that she had impeccable timing. Any comment or suggestion was dispensed at the moment of maximum impact in order to elicit the desired effect, and if Mary ignored it or did not comply, Rosamund was more than content to pretend she had never uttered it. Usually however, such timing gave Mary pause and indeed Rosamund's influence had directed the immature girl she had once been on more than one occasion. She had sat in this very room nine years ago and in a moment of desperate unguarded candor had told her aunt she was pregnant – _oh darling, you don't have to be, we're not in the 1900s you know _– those beautifully painted lips pursed, an eyebrow raised in an expression of vaguely amused surprise at such an outburst. She was a pragmatic and independent woman, she was no fool and Mary respected her but had once feared that the hard edges of her aunt's shell were beginning to creep over her own skin. The more her family tugged her, spoke relentlessly into her ear, the harder and colder she had become, until she felt safe, until she could not disappoint.

"So, they think Richard murdered a man?"

"They haven't any evidence," Mary raked her hands through her hair and looking up as the maid tripped into the room with a tea tray. "And he didn't" She added pointedly. "So they won't find any."

"Well there must have been something for them to arrest him in such a dramatic manner in the first place."

"Yes, something _ridiculous_ about a phone that went missing when Richard's briefcase was stolen weeks ago," Mary said quickly, her fingers spreading on her knees, her eyes unfocused on the china saucer pressed into the hand she reluctantly raised to accept it.

The cup teetered slightly and Lorelein made an aerobic lunging motion in order to capture any potential spillage that might be readily absorbed into the silk rug at Mary's feet.

"I'm fine," Mary snapped, to no one in particular as she used her other hand to steady the teacup and sent the maid into a hasty backwards step.

"I see," Rosamund nodded, sipping her tea. "He's no pussycat though is he, my dear?"

"What?" Mary demanded, her heart racing as Rosamund watched her over the rim of the teacup, unabashed.

"Oh come, Mary, don't upset yourself. I was merely pointing out that Richard is no angel."

"He may not be an angel but he isn't a murderer!"

Mary could feel a tremble begin in her legs as the heat of the balanced saucer seemed to burn a hole in her lap.

"I didn't mean to imply he was."

"Need I remind you that you never exactly discouraged my relationship with Richard," Mary said, tension pulsing in the curve of her jaw, her aunt's red silk blouse blurring before her eyes.

"I thought he could prove useful to you, to your career. It certainly wasn't my intention that you let him get you pregnant and marry you."

Mary glowered at her, her lips parted in disbelief.

"It was your intention that I manipulate him to my own ends."

"Well, dear, you certainly made your own choice there."

She stood up, knocking into the table so that Rosamund had to reach an elegant hand to steady it.

"Yes, I did make a choice. Richard was _my choice_."

"Mary, I am not trying to say that all this," she rippled her fingers vaguely in the air, "isn't an aberration but I fear your husband has spent a number of years sailing rather too close to the wind."

"You mean it was only a matter of time before an underhand deal caught up with him."

"Your words, darling, not mine." Rosamund's eyebrows arched dangerously and she replaced the cup and saucer on the table as Mary turned on her heel and stormed from the room.

Richard flinched as Mary slammed the door behind her and he made a hasty retreat back into the en suite bathroom as she kicked off her high-heeled shoes so they disappeared under the bed. Securing the towel around his waist he stepped out for a second time and surveyed his wife, who stood in the middle of the polished room pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, her shoulders tense.

"Did Rosamund speak out of turn?" he asked with an attempt at a wry smile, rubbing his hand through his wet hair.

"When doesn't she?" Mary snapped back and the corners of his mouth dipped at the expression she threw him.

"Poisoning your mind, no doubt," he said, a bitter edge to his voice as he turned away. "We both know she enjoys doing that."

"Oh, Richard, for God's sake!" she retorted, exasperated. "Don't deflect this onto my aunt. When have I ever listened to her?"

"That doesn't prevent her, or any of them, from trying."

Richard pressed his knuckles into the ornate chest of drawers, focusing on the rather grotesque vase perched atop it; the desire to smash the porcelain vessel into shards pulsed behind his eyes. He sensed her behind him and he wanted nothing more than to turn around and take her in his arms but he couldn't. Was he imaging the doubt he saw in her eyes, was it his own guilty conscience speaking? A conscience that had lain dormant for nearly thirty years, a part of him that was buried in Edinburgh, reduced to little more than bones in the ground, now rising, disturbed, to the surface. The hot water of the shower had not removed the lingering stench of twelve hours in the police cell and his skin crawled, a rippling sensation that was a memory of more than his recent experience.

"Richard."

He felt the softness of her fingers resting in the dip below his shoulder blade and then the feel of her smooth cheek against his back, the gentle movement of her breath as she rested her face there.

"They can try but they will not succeed." She wrapped her arms around his torso and spread her hands against the warmth of his skin. "We will face this together, like everything else."

"Aren't you going to ask what grounds they had to arrest me for conspiracy to murder, Mary?" he asked, his fists relaxing and moving to grip her forearms, glad he could not see her face.

"I know you haven't been involved in a murder, it is preposterous, and I can only assume Graves is making our opinions felt to the IPCC as we speak," she replied and her voice was so steady he almost believed her.

Her words seemed to vibrate through his skin to his very soul.

"How are the children?"

He turned around and she reached up to rest the palm of her hand on his freshly shaven cheek.

"They will be fine once they see you."

"I can't bear what you have all been put through." Richard pulled her into an embrace, his mouth and lips clenched tightly together as he pressed his face into the smooth waves of her hair, inhaling as if to consume the very essence of her.

Mary ran her fingernails gently down the hard shallow groove of his spine, kissing the hollow below his Adam's apple. She wished the experience of the previous night could be washed away as easily as the institutional, desperate scent of the police station. He had looked so lost, so haunted and so very sorry and for a moment she thought he had doubted whether she would fall into his arms. She had felt the relief in every muscle as he'd held her. Mary could feel his heart pounding now through the fabric of her blouse where she was pressed against his chest. She did not want to let him go.

"We should go downstairs," Richard said but he did not move as he felt a wave of arousal begin to engulf him.

"A little more time alone in the dark will do Rosamund some good."

"Mm," his verbal acquiescence turning into a kiss as he swept her hair from her face and kissed her neck. "I think a _great deal_ of time alone in the dark with you would do only good things for _me_."

"You've spent twelve hours in a cell not twenty five years in prison, darling," Mary replied, her breath catching in her mouth as the pressure in his lips increased, sending a sting across her throat. "And I recommend you leave no evidence of your lust on my neck." She smiled as he kissed the tender underside of her jaw.

"What I'm going to do will leave no evidence."

Mary ignored the chill that came unbidden across the back of her neck and caught his mouth with hers, losing every other sense.

* * *

><p>Felix freewheeled down the hill, briefly considered taking his hands from the handlebars but thought better of it. <em>Look, Dad, no hands! <em>He had fallen that time, after an initial euphoric feeling of success, the bike swerved and the momentum was lost. He had slipped from the saddle and with an unpleasant sensation of slow motion the bike was soon on top of him and pain was searing up his grazed forearm. His father's face creased with alarm and Felix remembered the way he had shouted his name in a burst that came straight from the heart. The wind flickered across his cheeks and swept his hair back from his face, the backpack bumping slightly on the base of his spine as he descended over the sharp dip of the hill, the house behind him.

Felix gently squeezed the brakes as he had a vision of himself going over the handlebars and a little burn of anxiety caused him to bite his lip and squint in anticipation. A skid was certainly out of the question; his arm was still marred by the whitened scars of a recently shed scab. Coming to a safe and fairly sedate halt Felix propped the bike against a tree, recalling the one occasion he had flung the bike to the grass with a display of abandon in front of his father –_ I work hard to buy you these things, treat them with respect _– suitably chastened he had taken much greater care ever since.

Walking a little away from the track Felix wriggled in his linen shirt, feeling sticky after the breezy reprieve of the hill. He took off his backpack and put it down on the grass, inclining his head to look up into the sparkling canopy of trees above him, the bars of sunlight searing through and beating down on grass dusty with thirst despite the gardener's best efforts. Wistfully Felix thought of the swimming pool at home, the hours of raucous fun, the afternoons spent plunging in and out with breathless energy and begging their father to throw them in.

He would not think about him now. He was coming back because his mother had said he would.

Unzipping his bag Felix withdrew his sketchpad and pencil case. As he was poised to make the first mark on the page a sound made him look up. A short way beyond where he was sitting was the gate that formed the main entrance to the estate and behind the ironwork a car was waiting with its engine running. Felix could hear the sound of a woman's staccato voice speaking in an accent that was so unfamiliar he couldn't decipher what she was saying. He heard this exchange end with the slam of a door and the high zipping sound of the car reversing. Felix stood up now and craned his head to see a woman close to the gate, almost pressing her face against the bars.

"Oi!" she shouted and Felix flinched nervously. "It's alright, come over here!"

Reluctantly he walked closer, stopping short, his shoes scuffing nervously on the spot, sending a cloud of dust up around his ankles. He regarded the strange woman before him. Her hair was of a shade he had not seen before, whitened with chemicals rather than age so it had achieved a straw like consistency in the ponytail that was scraped away from her face. It looked painful, the hair seemed to be pulling all her features backwards. She stared at him, her narrowed eyes a very dark inky blue. Felix looked away, his gaze travelling to the woman's arms, which appeared swollen, the skin ruddy and uneven. In fact every inch of her flesh looked uncomfortable, protruding at angles from her faded black tank top.

"Well, look at you," she said. "Just like my Richard."

"Are you lost?" Felix asked, uncertainly.

"I'm not lost, I came to see you." She laughed and it turned into a wet cough.

"To see _me_?"

"You can't guess who I am?" She smiled and Felix recoiled unintentionaly when he saw she had no more than four yellow top teeth.

He shook his head.

"I'm your nana," she replied and Felix noticed her arms were ridged with purple scars.

He frowned. They didn't talk about his father's family at home and Felix vaguely recalled the notion that his mother was dead. He couldn't remember being told so but it seemed an unspoken knowledge and this woman was like no-one Felix could ever imagine his father knowing, let alone being related to.

"You going to let me in then – what's your name?" She smiled again and Felix wished she wouldn't.

"Felix."

He had been taught to respect adults, to obey their requests and yet technically this woman was a stranger.

"Look, this is your dad, when he was your age." She fumbled around in the saggy canvas bag on her shoulder and withdrew a dog-eared photograph, which she handed him through the bars.

Felix looked at the picture. It was slightly sticky and had a thick crease down the middle where it had been folded, the line ran through the shoulder of the boy who looked back at him, a skinny fair haired boy who certainly bore a resemblance to himself. He was standing in front of a brown sofa that was covered in dark stains, in his hand a toy pistol hung and there were the remnants of Christmas wrapping paper on the floor. It did not look like a happy Christmas. Felix could not think of a festive photograph of Imogen or himself that didn't contain them grinning, deep dimples in their flushed cheeks. The boy in this picture was not smiling.

"I'll go get Grandpapa," Felix offered.

"Oh, he knows I'm coming," the woman replied airily. "So how about you let me in and you can take me up to that big house, eh?"

Felix fidgeted and handed her back the picture.

"Ok," he agreed with a nervous reluctance, shuffling to the gatepost and entering in the code he'd memorized.

"Ah, good lad," she slipped quickly through the opening and gave Felix's cheek a pinch.

Felix felt straight away that this was a mistake but sheer politeness prevented him doing anything other than going to collect his bike and bag and wheeling it in between them as they made their way back up the track. She limped slightly, one leg seeming stiffer than the other and she caught him glancing at her.

"Bad leg."

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"In a manner of speaking," she replied, in a strained mockery of Felix's own accent. "I've never known a bairn talk as posh as you. To think you're my grandson!"

A blush deepened in his cheeks and he gave an apologetic shrug.

"And such nice clothes you got on, very nice."

Felix looked down at his shirt and blue seersucker shorts. He had never given his clothes much thought. Mummy bought them, the nanny laid them out and he wore them.

"Thank you," he replied politely. "I like your – your flip flops." He nodded at the scruffy pink glittery thongs on her ruddy feet.

She kicked up a leg with a gratified smile. A sinking feeling deepened in Felix's stomach as the house came into view and his companion exhaled effusively, her eyes widening as she took hold of the other handlebar of his bike and leant on it. She wasn't a great deal taller than he was and he could see the bumps of her spine at the top of her sun reddened back. Felix felt a little sick as he wheeled the bike over the stones and she paused for a moment, standing back to look up at the gothic splendor of the building before them. He briefly considered asking her to wait outside but she was close at his side as he pushed open the front door and they stepped into the cool interior, the great hall resplendent through the imposing double doors that were flung open ahead of them. She tilted her head back to look at the domed ceiling and it was as if she were holding her breath, her eyes glittering.

"Felix, my darling, is that you?"

He tensed at the sound of his grandmother's voice, smoothing the puckered fabric of his shorts.

Cora froze outside the doorway of the library for a moment before swooping in and clutching Felix to her chest.

"Who are you?" she asked through clenched teeth. "Robert!" she called back into the room behind her without taking her eyes off the other woman for a moment.

"What is going on?" Her husband strode out with a frown before he stopped too and stared, open-mouthed.

"Abigail Carlisle, I'm Richard's mother. Call me Abby."

She looked even more out of place here than she had looking at him through the gate and Felix wanted nothing more than to flee the scene as quickly as possibly but Cora's arm was tightly across his chest.

"But I thought Richard's mother was dead," Cora said with a wide-eyed glance at Robert, her eyes sparking incredulously with each unspoken question that flickered quickly across her face.

"I don't think Richie is too proud of his old ma." She retrieved the photograph once more and handed it to Robert who took it firmly to overshadow the revulsion that was simmering around his mouth. "You believe me don't you, Felix?"

Cora's eyes boggled. "Felix go upstairs to the nursery at once," she said guiding him away whilst giving Abigail a wide berth.

"I could murder a cup of tea," Abigail announced, giving him a wink as he padded quickly to the staircase.

"But how did you get in here?"

"My grandson let me in didn't he?"

Cora bristled.

"Well I'm sorry, Richard is not here. And whilst we know so little we simply can't invite you to stay." Robert said firmly, recovering himself. "I will call you a taxi, perhaps you could go to a hotel in Ripon. I'm afraid I really could not say when Richard will be returning."

"No, I've seen the news," Abigail smirked. "It would've been nice to have a warmer welcome but I understand you well enough. I'll give you my mobile number shall I? I've no credit so I won't take yours."

"Very well." Robert nodded, exchanging a brief reassuring glance with his wife.

Felix was watching and listening from the stairs, ducked down below the banister. The image of the boy in the photograph played on his mind. He realized he had no idea who his father was before, in that other distant life that he had no part of. Felix had hardly considered that he had ever been a boy like him but something niggled in his mind enough to tell him that Daddy had not been like him, that his life had been vastly different. A stained sofa and grey tracksuit trousers that were too short. A mother who was covered in scars. Felix thought of his own mother, of how she was the most beautiful person in the world. Maybe Daddy had thought that of Abigail once.


	4. Chapter 4

_As others were; I have not seen._

Richard was having a nightmare. He knew it was a dream and yet it would not end. His face was buried into the damp pillow and his hands were grasping at the sheets around him. He could see Felix, his face was dirty and he was crying. He was wearing a grubby Hearts football shirt and Richard could feel the nylon snag on the dry pads of his fingers once more. An 'uncle' had bought him that shirt, one of Abigail's less psychotic boyfriends, he could not remember his name, only that he had died of a heroin overdose in the eighties. Felix was sitting in Richard's old place, in the corner of the settee, knees tucked up under his chin. The room was beige, everything was grey and heavy and he couldn't move, he couldn't go to his son. Abigail was there then, drifting into the room, her head thrown back so her thin white neck bent like the bough of a tree. Her eyes were closed and a smile stretched grotesquely across her mouth.

The perspective shifted and Richard felt his own hands clenching his knees together, his own face crumpled in a sob as hunger churned inside his stomach. She did not see him, she never saw him, not when she was like this. Abigail sank down onto the floor, leaning against the settee and throwing her head back so he could see her face upside down, her eyes open and rolled back into her skull. Still she smiled and Richard wanted to hit her face. He wanted to make a fist and bring it down onto her smiling mouth. He wanted to see her implode, his hand disappearing into putty. She would bounce back into shape; she always did, more disfigured than before, more wretched than ever.

_I hate you. _

He was in the kitchen and using a plastic fork to delve into the open dustbin. He wasn't stupid; he didn't want to get stabbed by a needle. He could see one winking at him, it's orange collar warning him not to get too close. He flicked it away with the fork and underneath a beer can he found a pizza crust. It tasted so wonderful that his mouth filled with saliva and he could barely contain himself as he devoured it in two bites. When he turned, his bare feet sticky on the linoleum he saw Felix in the corner and he was smaller now, a baby and he was hungry and Richard had nothing to feed him. _You are a bad brother. _The noise was loud and the baby was gone and there were people pushing past him, knocking him over, they span and lurched around him. He was in the center of the living room, standing there, removed and alone whilst around him flames burnt, foil glittered and spoons grew white hot.

"Richard!"

He took a breath as if he had been held under water. Mary was shaking him, her hand wrenching his shoulder back and forth. He bolted upright and he felt her fingers close around his bicep as he gasped for air.

"You were having a nightmare," she soothed, her hand reaching to caress the side of his face. "You were moaning."

"I'm sorry," Richard said, sinking back against the headboard.

Mary shuffled up next to him and rested her head against his chest; she laid her hand over his heart.

"Your heart is racing. Was it a very awful dream?"

"I wish it had been a dream."

"Darling?" Mary frowned, moving back and looking at him through the dark blur of the room.

"I'm going to get a glass of water."

He slipped away from her and disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him, the orange glow of a streetlight shimmering through the frosted glass. His face was dark in the mirror and he ran the tap, using his cupped hand to scoop the tepid liquid into his mouth. He rarely had nightmares, in fact he hardly ever had dreams at all, at least none he could recall. The last time he had dreamt about his childhood, been cast back to that hungry, empty little boy, had been after Felix was born. The gut wrenching fear and soaring elation he had experienced making him vulnerable to the pervasive power of repressed memory. He allowed himself to recall that day now as he looked at the shadows dancing on his face in the mirror.

_"Is that painful?" he asks._

_The nurse gives him a kind smile. "It is over very quickly." _

_She is holding the tiny red foot curled inside her hand, a little heel protruding, into which she presses the lancet. A prick of blood. Richard winces and the baby cries. He can only see the infant's eyes screw up and his mouth open to emit a high wail. The rest of his face is obscured by the apparatus attached to his nose, the tubes threaded back through the hat pulled over his head, the ties pulled tight across chubby cheeks. Richard can see every rib as the baby breathes._

_"Can he have a dummy?" the nurse asks._

_I don't know? You tell me. Why not?_

_"Some parents don't like to use dummies," she adds helpfully as he returns her gaze blankly. "You know, a pacifier?" She indicates the large baby in the neighboring cot who is sucking ferociously on a plastic teat._

_She removes her hands from the incubator and places the thin tube of blood on a cardboard tray._

_The crying continues and Richard feels the back of his neck grow hot, his fist closing tightly around the theatre cap in his hand._

_"Why don't you put your hands in, let him hear your voice."_

_He wishes she would stay and do something but she smiles again and walks away with the tray, leaving him standing impotently beside the incubator. The crying stops and the kicking limbs relax. As it now appears he will not make things worse Richard gains the courage to slide his hand through the porthole. He decides the safest thing to do would be to touch the fist closest to him and gingerly he takes it between his thumb and index finger; it looks comically like a handshake._

_"Hello, Felix," he says self-consciously._

_The fist opens and Richard rests his finger into that perfect open palm so the little hand closes to hold on to his own fingertip. This is a primitive reflex, he knows that much but he will take it as a reply. Five weeks early and Richard is not ready, he was never going to be ready, and he feels flung into this surreal world of which he has no experience, where he has no control._

_A machine alarms, a number is flashing on the screen above the bed space and a smiling nurse pushes a button to silence it – nothing to worry about. Richard can only believe her; what does he know? He knows nothing about any of this and he certainly doesn't know how to be a father. He can't even imagine holding the baby and a creeping anxiety clenches his jaw each time one of the nurses glances in his direction – don't suggest I hold him. He is too precious too hold. Emotion threatens to overwhelm him and he swallows the lump in his throat._

_He obeyed silently – stand here, don't touch anything, sit down incase you feel queasy. Richard had never felt 'queasy' in his life and at any other moment he would have scoffed but he sat without protest on the stool provided and held Mary's hand and wiped her tears whilst studiously ignoring the busy activity of the surgeons moving behind the drapes. A grey floppy little body was held up briefly before being whisked away and Richard thought that 'queasy' came nowhere near to describing how he felt, his heart had dropped through the floor. Mary cried harder and he kissed her hand before standing shakily and hovering beside the heated platform where they were rubbing the baby with towels, putting a tube into his nose and mouth and then a round mask over a tiny face. Those minutes, for it could have been no longer than minutes, stretched and shuddered through him until finally finally the infant's blue tinge deepened to pink and a wet little cry was heard._

_It was more than relief; it was an explosion through his chest as he burst to the surface into a glorious warmth._

_He bobs his finger gently and the baby's skinny arm moves and tenses. The little red lips purse for a moment and then Felix's eyes open and they are the most beautiful Richard has ever seen and they seem to melt through him._

_He cannot contain his smile as he ducks his head to look through the porthole, feeling the heat on his face and a surge of life through his chest. He has never been responsible for anything pure or perfect before and it is wonderful and terrifying._

_"Would you like to hold him?" The nurse has returned, she holds up a slip of paper. "The blood gas is good."_

_"Oh, I…"_

_Richard wants to say no, no I can't, I can't be trusted. But the nurse is watching him expectantly and pulling a chair into position and he finds himself nodding in agreement. He steps out of the way as deft hands replace his, loosening the grey straps and removing the prongs from the baby's nose, easing the cap back from his head so a shock of dark hair stands on end. There are red indents along his cheeks and on the underneath of his nose. Dark lashes flicker as his eyes close._

_"What we usually suggest," she says, her back to him, "is that you try skin to skin contact. So I'll pop him inside your shirt, okay?" She acknowledges Richard's skeptical expression as she turns around. "It'll stop him getting cold."_

_You're the expert, Richard thinks as he sits down stiffly and watches the nurse open the side of the incubator and set to work collecting the wires and tubes into one hand, murmuring soothingly – hello, sweetheart – as she picks up the baby with one easy movement. And Richard is trapped; she is standing in front of him, holding the sleeping baby up, wires hanging from his chest and feet. She tells him to hold open the front of the scrub top they made him wear in the theatre and he obeys, holding his breath as she effortlessly slips the baby inside whilst instructing him to support the tiny body against his chest. He looks down and a little head is poking out from his collar and he can feel the baby's warm skin against his, the little arms and legs folding and curling into a ball._

_He is not ready and he is engulfed, enraptured by the part of him nestled against his heart._

_"You see," the nurse smiles triumphantly. "He knows his daddy."_

Richard could detect and feel every remaining twinge of that moment as if there were nerves running through a portion of the past to tug inside his heart. When he slipped back into bed beside Mary she had gone back to sleep, the crumpled sheets twisted across her. He kissed her and slid in next to her, resting his face on the pillow beside hers. He closed his eyes and thought of his children and the love that repaired every hungry fractured piece of the boy on the settee crying in Muirhouse.

* * *

><p>"I thought I would come with you," Rosamund announced over breakfast. "It has been far too long since I've seen the children."<p>

Mary raised a skeptical eyebrow. "So you choose to see them when we're in Yorkshire?"

"Why not? London is stifling at this time of year, I would enjoy the air."

Richard watched the stream of black coffee being poured into his cup, pausing with the knife hovering over the butter dish.

"By all means," he smiled and Mary shot him a surprised glance. "The nanny is on holiday after all."

Rosamund's smile faltered and her eyes sparkled. Yes, Richard was quite recovered from his ordeal this morning.

"The car will be here in half an hour," he added. "Although I trust you have already packed, Rosamund."

"Indeed I have."

"I'm going to telephone Mama to let her know when we'll be arriving," Mary announced, getting up from her chair and placing the napkin down on her half eaten toast with a last meaningful glance in her husband's direction – _play nicely. _

Richard and Rosamund continued their breakfast in silence until Mary was out of earshot.

"Did you sleep well?" Rosamund asked.

Richard felt her manner of asking this question was rather pointed and wondered if she'd heard him moaning in his sleep, if the noise had crept up through the house, his nightmare infiltrating every perfect infrequently entered room. Or had she heard what they had been doing before drifting into unconsciousness? He smirked at this notion. Rosamund was not a prude and if she had heard their respectfully restrained ardour then he couldn't help but think she had found it amusing.

"Quite well, thank you. The bed was very comfortable."

He was more than content to exchange inconsequential niceties, he had no desire to spar with Rosamund when he would no doubt require a great deal of forbearance to deal with his father-in-law's questions. Rosamund, however, was merely conducting a brief prelude and she dabbed her mouth, laying the spoon beside the hollowed grapefruit. She fixed him with a starkly bright gaze and he had the sensation he always did around her, that she would bite him as soon as look at him, a barbed comment always ready to flick out from her tongue.

"I had dinner with Lord Hepworth last week," she said, glancing briefly at a highly polished nail.

"Oh?" Richard brushed the crumbs from his fingers onto the plate and leant back in his seat – _do your worst._

"He has been in the House," Rosamund said carefully.

"Indeed. Well he should make the most of it, who knows when the final reform will come."

"An eye to your own potential peerage, Richard?" Her eyebrows arched as she regarded him. "May I remind you that although his position is inherited, Lord Hepworth was elected by his peers."

Rosamund could imagine Richard in the House of Lords, quite easily, reformation from the inside. There had been whispers, talk that he might be made a life peer. Richard's friends were plenty and powerful and such an honour seemed almost inevitable, as unimpressed as her brother was by the notion, people would speculate. And Richard would listen, he listened very intently to everything and there was not a scrap of information that she doubted was stored away somewhere in his mind for future use. He must have known that the inquiries into phone hacking were coming. He had once told her - _nothing that happens in this city escapes my ear. _Whether information reached his ear by way of a tapped phone she was not entirely sure.

"Ah yes, the old boys club."

Rosamund did not rise to the bait; she would allow him that point, true as it was.

"The inquiries will begin and the mighty will fall," she replied, challenging him. "It seems Miles Lansdale already has."

"I cannot pretend to know what happened to Miles." Richard said and for the first time in the conversation he was uncomfortable. He thought of the dead man, the colleague who the police, however briefly, had thought he may have been involved in the death of.

"The specifics, no, but clearly he met with a violent end." She would not be cowed and as Richard's expression hardened, she forged on.

"I shall leave such an investigation to the police."

"And if his name were to come up during the phone hacking inquiry would you be surprised?" Rosamund asked.

"If it did I could claim no knowledge prior to the fact."

"I see. So your house is in order?" She continued as the air in the room seemed to grow stifling and she noticed, with an element of satisfaction, that there was a single bead of perspiration at Richard's temple.

"Leveson himself is welcome in my office," he smiled tightly. "Is this your circuitous way of expressing concern for my livelihood?"

"I trusted you with Mary and contrary to what you might think I have advocated for you on more than one occasion."

"I'm flattered."

"Don't be. Just don't prove my mother right."

* * *

><p>Mary sat on the edge of the bed, passing her hands over her face. Her mother had been curiously vague on the telephone and Mary could sense something unsaid lurking on the periphery of the conversation. The children were fine; they were outside with their grandpapa walking Isis. She did not have the energy to push the point and allowed herself the luxury of delaying any further confrontation for a few hours. Because it would come, her father would not be able to contain himself, years of simmering mistrust burning to the surface.<p>

Mary did not feel torn; it was painful to find herself between her family and Richard but the more they had tried to sever her from him, the harder she had held on. She still winced to recall the utter horror on her mother's face when she returned from the Bahamas with Richard, two weeks after she had been due to sit her finals. The message that she had gone had been passed through Sybil, who as gently as she had broken the news could find no way to cushion the blow. It had been an unfair burden to lay on a sixteen year old but there was no other option, and Sybil, naïve as she was, had been simultaneously horrified and captivated by Mary's rebellion. Her mother's words had not penetrated Mary's consciousness and they splashed from her, as inconsequential as raindrops on a lake, yet she found that now, so many years later, she could recall them all too clearly.

_"You have thrown away three years of your life, Mary!" Cora says, tears of rage and disappointment shining on the surface of her eyes._

_"Oh, Mama, I would have been lucky to get a third!" She replies, her throat tightening, throwing down the Prada handbag, a gift from Richard, onto the bed._

_"It would have been something!"_

_"Don't pretend you wouldn't have been just as furious if I'd sat the exams and failed," Mary replies bitterly, walking away to look out of the window, her fists tense at her sides._

_"It's the betrayal," Cora says and Mary rolls her eyes at the melodrama of the statement. "And this man! He is too old for you Mary and his reputation…!"_

_"You don't know him."_

_"Exactly! We know nothing of him except what we see on television! How on earth did you even meet him in the first place? How long has this been going on?" The questions are tumbling from Cora's mouth and her fingers strain around the handkerchief clutched in her hand._

_"I'm not Sybil, Mama! I am an adult, you have no jurisdiction over my boyfriends anymore."_

_"So he is your boyfriend? Oh, Mary!"_

_Mary almost feels sorry for her mother, but not quite, because she appears to hear but she does not listen. _

_"Now what? What are your plans? Because once your father gets home that is the first thing he will ask you."_

_My disappointment and anger is nothing compared to his. Mary knows that all too well._

_"I will do something, Mama, don't worry, I won't be cluttering up this house for long."_

_"What have we done to deserve this?" Cora asks and the edge to her tone causes her daughter to turn around to face her as she rises from where she has been perched tensely on the bed._

_"Believe it or not, Mama, everything I do is not with the sole purpose of either punishing or rewarding you and Papa."_

Mary rose from the bed, casting the memory from her mind. They had not been able to accept that she could not be the person they wanted her to be. She could not be enticed, persuaded, nudged into position, not truly. She had been immature; she had long recognized that, spinning out of control because she could, because it seemed the only way to grasp life, the only way to feel something. Mary had been protected and cossetted all her life. Boarding school had stifled her, muted any rebellion she had tried to make but when she arrived in London for university the world opened and it was as if everything had fallen away around her and there seemed to be nothing to lose.

She did not regret stepping onto that private plane with Richard, seeing the white and green of the islands spread out below her in a glittering ocean. He had not wanted to control her, to mould her; he wanted to set her free and he would not be shocked by anything she said or did. His acceptance arrested her and her plummet to the ground came to a halt as he caught her. He made her feel something. That holiday had changed her life, without it there would have been no Felix, and perhaps her parent's sustained attack would have worn away something of her passion for Richard but both those things had remained long after she had left him behind at Heathrow to face the onslaught. She would face it again, come up against another wall of criticism and bear it.


	5. Chapter 5

_I have been one acquainted with the night._

"Daddy!"

Imogen flew into him and squealed as he picked her up and spun her around, her blue dress fluttering. Richard grinned, kissing her cheek and placing her back on the ground. The temperature of the afternoon was at a peak and the exposed area at the front of the Abbey was searingly hot, a heat seeming to rise from the stones around their feet. He put his arm around Felix and kissed the top of his head, inhaling the sweet warmth of his silky hair, the boy clung against him tightly and a frown tugged at Richard's brow.

"Hello, darling," he said and his voice caught in his throat.

He thought once more of his son's terrified face, the way he and Imogen had run towards him at the top of the stairs. He thought of how his own mother had been taken away by police as he stood back silently and watched. He watched as she twisted and writhed, a string of saliva hanging from her cracked lips, a make shift tourniquet still around her arm, turning the skin below it pale. A stranger's hands had closed around his shoulders and Richard had turned into the woman and let her cradle his head against her hip, he was five years old.

_Take her away. _

They had taken her but she had come back, the peaceful time spent in the bedroom decorated for an older child had been soft and brief. The smell of fresh washing drying on his foster mother's landing all too quickly replaced by the familiar odor of Abigail's disregard for hygiene of any kind. At Felix's age Richard had no longer thought that the police would rescue him, that anyone would save him, he had long decided that if he were going to escape it would have to be under his own steam. The police still came of course, but Richard began to collude, to hide all the drugs paraphernalia when Abigail was too out of it to do it herself, just incase anyone came to call, incase a battering ram burst through the front door. Why did he do that? He had loved her he supposed and it wasn't until later that he had actually plotted and prayed for her downfall.

Richard was in no doubt that his children loved him and he knew from experience that it took a great deal to diminish a parent in a child's eyes, yet he felt ashamed and he took Felix's warm cheeks in his hands and looked into the boys blue eyes for a moment.

"A woman came here!" Felix blurted out, glancing quickly at his grandparents who were standing in the doorway exchanging greetings with Rosamund.

"What woman?"

"She said she was your mum," he said, biting his lip. "I'm sorry Daddy!"

Richard did not reply but he rested his hand reassuringly on Felix's shoulder, looking up to catch his father-in-law and Mary listening. His heart had skidded to a halt inside his chest. His mothers face was before his eyes, her gritted teeth, the way she smiled as she drew back the plunger a little first so a darkened swirl of blood filled the syringe. The way she would sometimes leave the needle hanging from the crook of her arm, puckering the skin with it's sharp metallic point. That woman, that disgusting creature had been here, here of all places, near _his _children. A point of pain began in his temple and spread and stung across his brow as the intensity of the sunlight became unbearable.

"Felix, take Imogen down to the kitchen and see if lunch is almost ready," Robert said.

Rosamund saw no need to extricate herself from whatever discussion was about to take place, her painted lips parted ever so slightly and she raised an eyebrow. _The plot thickens_, she thought. Richard was someone who always seemed to her to have entered the world fully formed, with a past so finely airbrushed that it was indecipherable. The fact that he had ever had a mother at all seemed in itself somewhat surprising. So after the group had moved awkwardly into the relatively cool atmosphere of the library, she perched unobtrusively on a chair by the window with an air of barely disguised curiosity, as Robert beckoned Mary and Richard to the sofa. There was no breeze from the open window and almost as soon as he had been relieved by the drop in temperature Richard felt unpleasantly warm once more, sweat prickling on his brow.

"Perhaps you could enlighten me?" Richard asked, his stomach contracting.

"I rather thought it might be the other way around," Robert replied.

"Richard's mother is dead, Papa," Mary frowned, looking between them. "Isn't she?"

Her husband avoided her eyes.

"That is what I thought," her father said, still standing. "However, a woman claiming to be her was here yesterday. She persuaded Felix to let her in at the main gate."

Richard's throat sprang shut and he stood up quickly, his worst fear realized. Abigail, close to his sweet, innocent boy. A child who knew nothing of the ugliness of the world, who until recently had been exposed to nothing that was unseemly, dirty, depraved.

"She was alone with Felix?" he demanded, his hand opening and then closing into a fist.

Robert frowned, seeing confirmation of his suspicions in the other man's eyes. He had believed the woman; almost at once he had sensed she was telling the truth. Robert felt experience had taught him that Richard was a liar and he saw nothing outlandish in her claim to disabuse him of the notion. Lies had diffused through the last ten years and they had splintered before his eyes, explosive and shattering before the larger fragments were swiftly removed and concealed within his daughter's marriage, cloaked in vows and silence. Had those things been resolved? He didn't know and he couldn't ask but the shards remained embedded in his own mind and he could not forget. He couldn't forget Mary's tears as she'd held newborn Imogen and asked for the husband Robert had failed to track down.

Of course, Richard's mother was not dead, she was alive and she was an embarrassment to him or even a danger. Robert had sensed something unpredictable, something subversive in the almost reptilian dart of her eyes as she seemed to process every detail of the house and its occupants in the short time she had stood in the hall. She was quite the sort of relative one would wish to conceal. There was likely a great deal Richard wished to hide.

He had long suspected that his son-in-law's past was a foreign country, a place he had no desire to explore but which had crept across the boundary of his own life measure by measure. Little flickers occurred every so often and Robert saw the hint of the very hard, raw core at the heart of Richard. Mary was wrong, Robert did know Richard. He had known men like him all his life, the self-made men, who felt more entitled, more deserving because of whatever fight they had had to reach the summit. Well, Robert had fought too and with the lucky hand of fate had come the extra burdens of responsibility. There was a place for men like Richard in the world, the media moguls, the entrepreneurs and why shouldn't they strive to better themselves? Robert had no quarrel with the notion of self-improvement, and if seen from the outside he would even have admired Richard. But Richard was not on the outside, he was here, firmly wedged into his family.

"So are we to take it that this woman was telling the truth?"

"Richard?" Mary asked, disbelief clouding her features.

"I haven't seen her for thirty years and I had assumed she was dead, although I didn't know for sure."

"She did seem unwell," Cora interjected, almost earnestly, as if being ill and being dead could be bridged and the weight of the lie somehow lessened.

"That is because she's a heroin addict," Richard replied.

Cora's mouth dropped open and she looked to Mary who was sitting very still on the edge of the sofa, her eyes unfocused as she clasped her hands in her lap. Richard looked down at her and although she felt his gaze upon her she did not look up to meet it.

How could he expect her to meet his eye? He should have known he could not keep his promise to tell her nothing but the truth. When he had said those words he had already lied. She believed him when he told her his arrest was the result of a wrongful accusation, she continued to believe him even though he had lied in the past, she thought she knew him. She thought she knew which lies were important, that as long as he didn't betray her it did not matter what he did, as long as they trusted each other that was what mattered. A hot flush of shame pinched color into his cheeks – _there are things I cannot share, things you would not want to hear – _and no lie that passed his lips could be covered by those words, they were meaningless as soon as an untruth was uttered. For if you cannot speak of it and she accepts that then why lie?

Abigail had taught him how to lie; she lied seamlessly. She lied and made it seem natural, a normal a part of any relationship, a necessity even and it was a habit that had taken time for Richard to dismantle, so that he no longer felt the need to lie pathologically about the smallest most inconsequential things. He kept things from Mary to avoid lying about them but when she had asked about his mother, he did not feel that his inability to discuss her would cut it. So he made her dead, a corpse, for after all that was really what she was. Now she had risen, returned, clanking chains and no doubt dragging her addiction behind her like a starving tethered stray. Why now? And why not, she had seen him being arrested on television, she had laughed perhaps, _bad blood will out, _she wanted money possibly, to spare her sharing the details of his childhood with a press that would no doubt be interested to hear of his previous brushes with the law. She was predictable to him now, despite the fact he had not seen her for all of his adult life, he knew what she would have become, her mind numbed and addled further by heroin. They were all the same, junkies, nothing sacred but the next fix.

"She left her telephone number," Robert said. "We told her it would be best if she stayed in a hotel until you returned."

"I will not be calling her. I very much doubt you would wish her to return here and I have no interest in seeing her."

"I see." Robert said, looking to Cora whose widening eyes suggested she expected him to delve further into this conversation.

"Perhaps having met her you can see why I have not felt the need to introduce you before," Richard said, preempting his next question.

"Mary, dear?" Cora asked, half-rising from her seat.

Mary got up, her face pale and her fingers clenched into points at her sides as she fled the room, a stiff silence in her wake. She thought she might be sick and she ran up the stairs with her hand covering her mouth. Heat prickled across her forehead and her hands were shaking as she shut the bedroom door behind her and leaned heavily against it. He had lied. Richard had lied to her. He had told her that his mother had died of cancer when he was a teenager. There was no room for misinterpretation. Had he not trusted her, not trusted her to understand? She who had been so open with him, who had let herself unfurl under his touch, revealed herself completely to him, exposing the most vulnerable parts of her soul. She knew he did not tell her everything. He never shared childhood stories, his face closing, shutting her out, pale blue eyes fading to grey.

And she did not push him, because she felt that if she asked, he would tell her; he would not lie. Edith, for one, had never been so sure. Mary walked to the dressing table and sat on the stool, her fingers catching the bracelet that lay there and moving it across the polished surface, the whisper of gold on wood. She could hear her sister's words, see the way her jaw clenched and her eyes hardened as she spoke them, they rang all too clearly in her ears now.

_He is lying to you._

_"Get out," she says, turning her face away to hide the quiver of her lip._

_"Why would I lie?" Edith is unmoving, standing by the bed as Mary sits at the dressing table in her old room._

_"To cause trouble?" she snaps, swallowing and turning back to look at her, her eyes shining._

_"Richard was not there Mary. He may have told you he was but he was lying."_

_"Has it ever occurred to you that he might have better things to do than seek you out at every Press Association dinner?"_

_Mary knows for a fact that Richard avoids his sister-in-law whenever possible, that he does not like to be troubled by the hint of referred disapproval he feels emanates from her eyes. He admitted this once and Mary could not hide her disbelief, that Edith, of all people, could put Richard off his stride was rather surprising. He moves so easily in his world, he is so very powerful and yet something about her family twist at a piece of insecurity deep inside him. Mary almost reminds Edith of the fact that had it not been for Richard, she is unlikely to have secured such a coveted position working for a high profile magazine._

_"You can be as angry as you like but it does not change the facts."_

_Mary cannot help but think Edith is enjoying herself: her fingers pressed together at her sides, the quirk of her lip as she speaks, the confidence in her tone that she always gained as a child when she thought she had won a small victory over her elder sister. Edith has been overlooked and Mary knows that but she struggles to sympathize, it is not as if she has done anything to deliberately detract her parents attention. They remain locked in a relentless battle, each cheap jab irresistible and now Edith has found a weak spot, a chink and Mary cannot defend herself as she once might have. She is vulnerable and she hates it, she hates that a part of her sister might even pity her._

_"He told you he was there and he wasn't."_

_"Why would he lie?" Mary asks; she is pale but she is hiding how terribly sick she feels._

_"You tell me."_

_Edith's lips form a thin hard line as Mary gives a humorless laugh._

_"Don't be ridiculous! Richard isn't having an affair!"_

_She removes the bracelet from her wrist and places it down on the lacquered surface of the dressing table so that it makes a sharp noise, a ringing that continues in her ears for a moment. She closes her eyes and waits for the wave of nausea to pass._

_"I'm not trying to upset you," Edith says._

_"Well, you could have fooled me," Mary rests her head in her hands and wishes her sister would just leave; her heart is pounding and she knows if she held out her hand it would shake. "I suppose you have already told Mama. I'm surprised you didn't launch a two-pronged attack."_

_"Why do you always assume everyone wants to attack you?" Edith demands and she is that petulant frustrated thirteen-year-old once more._

_"So I should take this news in the spirit in which it is intended: sisterly concern? I could believe that of Sybil, but not you."_

_"So you would rather not know?"_

_"I would rather you didn't enjoy telling me quite so much." Mary replies before standing._

_She feels light headed but she stands her ground; she will not give Edith the satisfaction but as she glances up she sees her sister is frowning, even looking a little concerned._

_"Are you all right? You look as if you might faint."_

_"I'm pregnant. Why don't you run and tell Mama that too? And you can keep your concern to yourself. I'm going to check on Felix." Mary brushes past her._

_"Mary," Edith says as Mary reaches to open the door, her back to her sister. "I'm just telling you what I know and if that's difficult to hear then I'm not the one to blame."_

_She doesn't turn around because now she is almost sure that amid the smug satisfaction Edith is also sorry and Mary cannot bear for anyone to feel sorry for her, least of all her family. They are not children anymore and malice is not so easily dismissed._

_"I wouldn't want to see you made a fool of," Edith says and without seeing her face Mary does not know if she is being cruel or genuine._

Mary felt almost as sick now as she had that day, an awful dread lingering in her stomach. She had confronted Richard when she and Felix had returned to London and he had laughed it off - problems at the office, I didn't want to worry you – it was laughable, that he could think her so stupid and she had told him so. Her voice had climbed and shaken and she felt that all reason seemed cloudy, that she was so confused and angry but perhaps more with Edith than with her held her then and she let him because she could not hear a single beat in her heart that told her Richard would be unfaithful to her, she could not believe that and so she let him whisper in her ear and kiss her hair. Six months later, when she was alone in hospital giving birth to Imogen without him at her side she thought back to that moment and doubt surged anew, as it did now. Richard might not be a murderer but he was a liar.

* * *

><p>Lunch was a stilted affair. Mary had a tray in her room and Imogen seemed to be on a mission to irritate her brother. She kicked his shin under the table with her ballet pump and when he glared at her she poked her tongue out. Felix rolled his eyes and looked back down to the cold chicken salad on his plate. Nobody spoke so Imogen began to hum loudly as she struggled to cut her meat, the fork screeching on the china and causing Cora to flinch. Robert took his granddaughter's cutlery and cut the chicken into pieces for her as she swung her legs and caught her brother once more on the knees.<p>

"Stop it!" Felix yelled, turning to Richard. "She's kicking me!"

"Stop it, Imogen," Richard said distractedly.

"Where's Mummy?"

"You know where she is, she's upstairs," Felix snapped.

"Is she poorly?"

"Mummy is tired, darling," Cora said, shooting Richard a piercing look, which he ignored.

"Tired? Why?" Imogen wound a piece of hair around her finger before beginning to suck it.

"Just shut up!"

"Felix!" Robert said, looking at Richard who seemed to have completely detached himself from the scene. "Don't speak to your sister like that."

"I think Mary had the right idea," Rosamund said, eyeing the bickering children.

"Are you happy to be on holiday from school, Felix?" Cora asked, smiling forcibly.

Felix shrugged, flattening a piece of potato with the back of his fork. He could not get rid of the lump in his throat and each time he swallowed it seemed to harden, a ball of anxiety that persisted no matter how many sips of water he took. He was worried about his mother and his father had barely spoken since he and Imogen had returned from their trip to the kitchen. It was his fault. Again. He had let Abigail in, he had not warned Daddy when he'd seen the men creeping up the garden. Felix put down his knife and fork and looked up to meet his grandmother's expectant gaze.

"Please may I leave the table?"

"Darling, you haven't eaten anything," Cora said anxiously.

"I'm going to excuse myself as well," Richard said, standing up and putting his napkin down on his chair before striding from the room.

"There's nothing like playing happy families, is there?" Rosamund said, dabbing her mouth.

"Can we play Snap instead?" Imogen grinned.

"I'm sure Aunt Rosamund will play Snap with you," Robert said with a sigh. "Seeing as she is such an expert at Happy Families."

Felix slumped up the stairs miserably, his fingers trailing along the banister. When he looked back he saw his father making for the front door and briefly considered calling out to him, joining him on his walk, but he thought that he probably would not be welcome. Daddy was angry with him. He made his way slowly along the corridor, pausing to look over the balustrade into the saloon; he could hear Imogen singing in halting French and no doubt lifting the atmosphere in the way only she could. Felix occasionally felt jealous, mostly when his little sister was flitting around, sprinkling the air with her relentless good humor as his parents watched on adoringly. It wasn't a common sensation, because he rarely felt the balance of attention was uneven, but like all children Felix very much enjoyed any time he spent alone with either of his parents.

The previous summer he had spent three weeks in hospital and looking back on it Felix thought of it with an inordinate amount of enjoyment. Guiltily he had savored being carried into the Emergency Department in his father's arms, his thigh hot and throbbing, sharp fingers of pain spreading up into his hip. He lay stiffly against his chest as Richard had raged at the receptionist – _I want to see a doctor now! _– he sweated and then vomited all over himself and his father had not flinched, holding him close, pressing his face against his cheek for a moment as a flushed nurse beckoned them through.

Felix had quickly become worse and he had seen the panic in Richard's eyes as he began to pant for breath, fear flickering between them as the doctor removed his clothes and listened to his chest, gently touching the swollen part of his leg and looking serious. The week before he had fallen from the tree house they were building, an x-ray showed nothing was broken but now the doctor said he had osteomyelitis and would have to go to Intensive Care. Felix had never seen his father's face lose color so quickly and he wanted to say, _it's not your fault, Daddy, _but he couldn't speak.

His parents had sat by his bedside and stroked his hair and taken it in turns to sleep on the pull down bed beside him. Long days were spent doing puzzles and watching films. He was very brave and enjoyed being told so as the nurses put antibiotics into the line in his neck several times a day. The painful and traumatic aspects of the experience had faded away and he was left with the warmth of knowing just how cherished he was, of how his parents would not survive anything happening to him.

Had Abigail – _Nana?_ - ever sat with his father in hospital and comforted him completely just by her sheer presence? He could not imagine it. Felix remembered one of the first nights after he was transferred to the children's ward, hearing the babies screaming and being so afraid, unable to move his neck as the transparent dressing clung and tugged at the skin there, the three little tubes hanging down and tickling his collarbone. He had started to cry quietly in the dark, the curtains around the bed like great dark wings seeming to close in on him. His mother had slipped into bed beside him, he had curled up next to her and he wasn't afraid anymore, as if by magic. The only thing Felix feared was anything happening to either of his parents and sometimes the thought kept him awake at night, the thought that he could not turn against them and be reassured that there was nothing to fear.

He paused outside the door of Mary's bedroom, his hand hovering before he knocked.

"Who is it?"

"It's me," Felix said.

The door opened and she smiled at him but he thought that perhaps she had been crying; it was hard to tell.

"Hello, darling, are you alright? Did you have lunch?"

He nodded and took her hand; Mary covered it with her own after shutting the bedroom door behind her.

"I was just coming down," she said, swinging his hand. "I'm fine, sweetheart, I was just feeling a little tired."

"You're not poorly?"

"No, nothing like that," she reassured him but the little boy's forehead remained creased with a familiar frown.

* * *

><p>Richard sat on the steps of the stone folly, the angle of the wall shading his face from the worst of the sun as he looked back up at the Abbey. He had intended to go further, up through the trees to the top of the hill where he could be secure in the knowledge that he was not going to be disturbed. He had changed his mind because he wanted it to be easy for Mary to find him if she came looking. He would not seek her out; he could not bear for her to send him away. The stone was hot under his hand and it caught on the calluses on his palm. Heat lines shimmered on the horizon and he narrowed his eyes, licking his dry lips. He could not relax; he always felt that at any moment someone would come and tell him to move on, to stop trespassing, <em>this place is not for the likes of you<em>. He was very out of place here, they had always made that clear and the thought of Abigail, her battered form amidst all that beauty, left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He should have told Mary the truth but he did not want even the mere mention or allusion to his mother to somehow taint the life he had, the beautiful family that was his against all odds.

He had tried to fit in. He had participated in shoots, pheasant, clay pigeon, he had found the crack of the gun and the finite concentration required rather satisfying and he had ensured he was appropriately attired for such occasions. He had listened to his father-in-law's talk of Harrow and Oxford, nodding, a tight smile stretching his mouth. He was charming and as passive as humanly possibly when listening to the political opinions of Mary's grandmother or the gossip her mother seemed to feel it was her duty to impart to him as if he were a particularly poorly educated boy with no knowledge of the machinations of society.

He humored them whilst all the time resentment clung in his mouth; he tolerated being patronized, even admonished, for Mary's sake and because it was better than the outright hostility he had initially been treated to. It was tempting, of course, to lash out, to strike back with the force he could so readily summon but usually it took one look at Mary and his tongue was held for him. He was so used to defending himself, to _fighting _and he was not used to having an ally, an indomitable stalwart, but that was what she was.

He was glad she hadn't met his eye; he knew her expression would tear into him. She never thought the worst. She was the only person who had never expected the very worst from him, who allowed him to lie as long as the part that belonged to her was true.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Apologies for the delay with this, I do have a few more parts sitting around so I don't know why I hadn't posted them! I've got a lot else on, but suddenly today felt back in the zone for this particular 'verse! So, I hope you enjoy and I'd love to hear your thoughts :) Thanks for sticking with me! And as always, hugest thanks to my beautiful, kind, and very special beta, mrstater, who is an angel in Voldemort clothing. Love you!_

* * *

><p><em>But the tear that now burns on my cheek may impart, the deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.<em>

Imogen danced along the stone slabs behind the house, the soles of her feet burning with pins of heat. Felix laughed and removed his shoes to hop after her, their disagreement over lunch forgotten, a stone catching in his heel so he stood on one leg for a moment and felt the warmth burn through the ball of foot. Mary watched them, the sun bouncing from their golden heads. Imogen was wearing a red and white striped swimsuit, three bows running up the back and they swam before Mary's eyes as the small girl span in a circle, grabbing Felix's hand to pull him into an impromptu dance. Felix smiled back at her, the dimples standing out in his cheeks, a slight lowering of his eyelids, his eyes sparkled; he was so like Richard. As she looked at her son she thought that she could sense something of how her husband had been as a child. How would Felix react to the horrors Richard had no doubt experienced at the hands of his mother? She knew little about heroin, but enough for a shiver to cross the warm skin of her forearms at the thought of her children ever being exposed to its consequences.

She had experimented with drugs; it had all been part of what amounted to a rebellion against everything and everyone, yet it simultaneously involved her superficially fitting in with her peers, bowing to even minimal amounts of pressure. She was different, set apart, isolation clinging to her skin. The drugs made her mindless, the little pills so easily washed away with the next shot, she was just another young girl swept up in the arms of others on the dance floor. That had been in her first year at university, and she could even pretend it was fun, until something happened that made her want to forget, to remove fun and replace it with darkness, with not thinking and not remembering.

By the time she met Richard she was snorting cocaine, and at the ball she attended with Rosamund she had taken ecstasy shortly before her aunt had introduced her to him – _do meet Sir Richard, Mary darling – _she had eyed him and smiled unnaturally and he had been polite and carefully charming. She had caught him watching her from across the room later, as the crowd began to ripple around her, and in her euphoric state she decided she must look irresistible. Later, he told her he was waiting for her to pass out on the floor – _I'm surprised nobody else noticed you were as high as a kite. _His hand had caught her elbow as she stepped up to the bar, her fingers digging into the ledge as her legs swayed slightly beneath her. She beckoned to the barman who was studiously ignoring her.

"_Perhaps you'll have more luck ordering a drink," she says with a smile; her eyes heavy as she meets his steady gaze with difficulty._

"_Water." Richard nods to the barman who moves over to fill a glass with water, setting it down in front of her._

"_That wasn't what I had in mind, Sir Richard," she says, her hand moving to rest on the front of his shirt, her finger sliding up between the buttons to touch the warmth of his skin. He moves away._

"_I think you should drink this, then find your aunt." He hands the glass to her. "And go home."_

"_You're trying to get rid of me," she teases but he is stiff and unyielding._

"_Yes, before whatever you have taken wears off and you are hit by the inevitable come-down. I wish only to spare you some embarrassment." His eyes are very blue, his face lined and as his gaze bores into her, her breath catches a little in her throat._

"_Are you going to take me home?" _

"_I'll put you in a cab."_

"_How dull." She smiles and the room spins._

_His hand is still at her elbow, and yet she feels numb all over._

"_Lets go somewhere else," she says, her eyes flickering over his still face. "A club."_

"_I don't think so."_

"_Not your cup of tea?" She rests her hand on the waistband of his trousers and he looks down with mild amusement before taking her slender fingers in his own rough ones and removing them._

"_No," he agrees as she keeps hold of his hand._

"_How do you know my aunt?" she asks, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles and catching him with a gaze that is, for a moment, steady._

"_I know everyone," he replies._

"_And now you know me."_

Afterwards he would remind her of that first conversation and they would laugh; of what happened later that night they would not speak but she hadn't forgotten it. She had not forgotten the feel of the cold tile of the restroom wall against her cheek or the way he had appeared from nowhere to kneel down beside her. His arm closing around her shoulder as she fell into his chest, her tears soaking into his shirt, this stranger, this man she barely knew was suddenly the only person she wanted to see.

"_I'm going to take you home," he says but she shakes her head, her hair falling into her pale face, her fingers clawing at the sleeve of his shirt._

"_No, I can't, please."_

"_I have a car. My driver will take you," he says, and he is firm as he helps her to her feet._

_She leans against him and he smells of expensive aftershave and cigarette smoke. Nausea burns in her chest and she realizes she is going to be sick, pulling away from him and banging open the door of one of the cubicles. She retches but there is nothing, nothing left in the great cavernous hole inside her and she feels so empty, so alone. But she is not alone and she feels his fingers gently pass over her temples as he holds her hair back from her face._

"_Just leave me here," she says, a sharp jolt of pain shooting through her knee on the hard floor._

"_I'm not sure that would be very gentlemanly," he replies._

_She bows her head and clutches the sides of the toilet bowl for a moment._

"_Being in a ladies bathroom is certainly not very gentlemanly," she says, feeling the sweat of relief standing out on her brow as the urge to vomit passes._

"_I think we may well have moved beyond propriety." He helps her to her feet. _

_He walks her through the ballroom, the detritus of the evening sprinkled across tables and littered on the dance floor. A heavy-eyed waitress looks up at them and quickly looks away, sweeping plastic champagne glasses into a gaping black bag. The lights are on and the room is too bright, the glaring afterglow of frivolity seeming gaudy and false. Richard supports her gently under one arm and she feels he is all that keeps her from sinking into the floor, dissolving here as a leftover of an inconsequential evening. Every night like this is filled with nothing, acute and all consuming for those brief hours then fading to grey so soon afterwards, pointless. She wants to cry as the cool night air hits her and then she begins to shake as he helps her into the backseat of the waiting Mercedes. He sits in the seat by the opposite window and she leans against the door, the motion of the car vibrates against her skull._

"_What's your address?" he asks._

"_I can't go there. Drop me at a hotel," she replies and her voice is flat and she is coming down, far down and she wonders if perhaps he might catch her._

_He doesn't take her to a hotel. He takes her to his penthouse and he runs her a bath. He sits in the open plan living room as if he is the guest, as if this is her home. She shuts the door and lets the steam fill her head, she closes her eyes surrounded by gleaming marble, allows the warmth of the water to cover her body. She inclines her head back and sinks beneath the water so her hair swims in tendrils before her face, she waits just a little too long and when she sits up she gasps. She steps out of the deep tub, wraps a towel around herself and clears a window in the clouded mirror with her hand, the condensation sliding coolly against her palm. There is a glass cupboard to her left and she opens it, her fingers dancing over the contents, packets of paracetamol, an electric shaver and then the blade of an old fashioned cutthroat razor._

_She thinks about it and she picks it up, the glint of the metal catching the light and she thinks that something would seep away once she pressed it against her porcelain skin, mottled by the flush of the hot bath. A slit in wax, she can hardly believe she would bleed. Slowly she shuts the cupboard and sits on the edge of the bath, holding the razor lightly in her hand so that it could easily fall, clatter against the polished floor. She holds the sharp edge against the tender inside of her forearm and presses down, it does not sting, she doesn't feel anything. It must be blunt and now she cannot turn back so she grips it tightly and makes a short slash. Something to remember. It stings then and she cries out despite herself. At first there is nothing, just a white line, but quickly it fills with a river of crimson and the blood seeps out in drops. It is running down over her skin in dark scarlet lines and she panics._

"_Mary?" Richard says from outside the door, he knocks and then pushes down on the handle, it is unlocked._

_He wraps her arm in a towel and then in the kitchen he finds a first aid box and puts a bandage inexpertly around the wound. She lets him; she sits impassively wrapped in his dressing gown, her eyes unfocused as his lips knead together whilst blood stains the white gauze quicker than he can cover it. He says nothing and she is glad. He finds another bandage and puts that on too. Then Richard holds her, he holds her against his chest whilst she cries silently and he asks no questions._

Imogen cried out; she had fallen, a small sharp gash in a perfect little knee. Mary placed the child onto her lap and bent her head to examine the wound as Felix looked on frowning for a moment before kneeling down and holding his sister's hand, reassuring, soothing. He was like his father and Mary could hardly bear to think of how many times Richard had picked up the pieces of a shattered soul as a child. She felt that night he had understood, he had understood on a level that he couldn't express and when she had woken, slumped against his chest in the half light of a rising dawn, she had seen him sleeping, without peace, and she knew he was more haunted than she could ever be.

* * *

><p>Richard slipped back inside the house unseen, exhaling in the cool reprieve of the shadows on the stairs as he mounted them. The eyes of austere ancestors surveyed him as he reached the top, his footsteps firm as he made his way along the corridor. He barely had a photograph of any member of his family, and the person who he most wished to have a memento of was as vague and distant to his mind's eye as the expression behind Mary's great grandfather's cloudy gaze. What it must be to have this history, to be surrounded and enveloped in the folds of great tradition, in some ways it must be a comfort. His father-in-law certainly seemed comfortable with his place, with the prospect of being immortalized in the scratch of oil upon these walls, a faithful hound at his side.<p>

In the bedroom he thought of Mary rising languidly from the great canopied bed as a young girl, bored and smothered, that sardonic raise of her eyebrows. He thought of the fights she must have had with her sisters here and how she had probably cried into the pillows of this bed. He ran his fingers over her belongings on the dressing table, half unpacked from the open weekend bag on the floor. The smooth pine of the jewellery box squeaked slightly under his touch and he opened the lid, the flash of purple velvet lining the interior bright to his eye. There was no jewelry – _one must not make it easy for a thief _– she kept most items in the safe at the house when they were not on her person. His fingers alighted on the photograph that lay on top, three little girls, Mary pretty and poised, her arm around a giggling curly haired Sybil and to her other side Edith, with a cautious smile, her eyes on her sisters rather than the camera.

"Are you looking to find some of my secrets?"

She entered the room silently and stood still with her back to the closed door.

"Is that a nightgown?"

Her lips tightened, her eyes hard as she struggled to suppress a smile.

"It's a maxi dress, Richard," she replied, one hand holding a bunch of the thin white material in her hand to keep the hem from the floor. "In case you haven't noticed it's rather hot."

He nodded; his eyes twinkled for a moment as he felt a fresh breath of air enter his lungs, the crush of the day easing from his chest momentarily.

"You can remove that expression from your face."

"You would like me to explain?" he asked, the distance waxing and waning between them.

"I think perhaps you ought to," she replied, a muscle in her jaw tensing so that he wished to cup her face in his hand, and kiss the color the sun had raised in her cheek.

"I wished my mother was dead, so I told you she was. I didn't want to ever discuss her again." Richard swallowed and moistened his dry lips, his eyebrows knitting.

Mary frowned and shook her head slightly, her eyes travelling away from his face towards the window behind him, exasperated and conflicted by the sympathy she felt for him.

"You could have told me the truth and then _we _could have agreed to never utter her name, if that was what you wanted. You _chose _to lie. You certainly did not need to. Not to me."

He stepped forward and extended his hand. Mary took it, because she couldn't not, because the pain in his eyes made her want to weep.

"I'm sorry."

"You're always _sorry, _Richard."

"I feel my past at my back when I think of her. I can smell it, taste it. You don't want to know what it was like."

She looked down at where his fingers gripped hers and then back up to meet his eyes.

"An excuse?" she asked.

"No, but it is a reason."

"You always have your reasons." There was an edge to her voice that Richard couldn't fail to catch and her eyes flicked away from his, as if she had caught sight of something she did not wish to see, an obscenity scrawled on the wall.

"You are my reason," he said, his voice deep as he moved to kiss her cheek.

She caught his chin in her hand and let his gaze penetrate hers for a moment.

"I know," she said, _and I love you more than I hate your lies._

Mary inhaled deeply as his lips met hers, her hands reaching to lightly finger the fabric of his shirt, almost feeling him shiver beneath her touch. He captured her and she enthralled him, she could see his pale eyes darken sometimes when he looked at her across a room and he would be unable to resist falling to her side. She felt his breath quicken in her ear when he slipped his hand around her waist to whisper something in a crowded room. They were drawn to each other still, after all these years, and quite often they simply could not resist the tug of the threads that bound them. She let his warm caress wash over her as his hands slipped around her hips, pulling her against him as they stood in the center of the room.

"I think I rather like this dress," he said as their lips parted, sliding his hands beneath the fabric so the heat of his palms seemed to brand her skin.

"I thought you would," she replied, moving to run her fingers through the smoothed hair at the back of his head.

"I think we need a holiday. A few days on the yacht," he said, his hands moving up beneath the loose material of the dress, trailing across her thighs and over her hips to press the small of her back, drawing her closer to him.

"And we all know what you like to do on the yacht," she breathed as her heart fluttered inside her chest, not quite a complete beat, not yet, the blood trembling and waiting to pound in her ears.

"Not only on the yacht," he said and the roughness of his voice spiraled inside her head. "But that particular place holds fond memories."

"We made a baby," Mary said, catching his cheeks between her hands, her fingers following the lines of his cheekbones, their lips trembling together but not quite touching so when he breathed he seemed to inhale her words.

"Let's make another," he said, his lips brushing hers. "I mean it, Mary. I love you more than that day, more with every day. Let me give you another baby."

"Oh, Richard," she whispered and it was as if a lie could never be uttered from his mouth, as if it could never swell and expand in his throat and be forced from lips that kissed her so tenderly.

She let her hands rake through his hair as they stepped in a half circle, their foreheads pressed together before he dipped his head down to draw her mouth to his and she felt herself falling, slipping under so that her breath came in short bursts. She repeated his name and it sounded distant, a whisper in a room that had begun to pulse around them. Every inch of her skin seemed to surge towards his touch as he tugged the dress down from her chest. She could remember the brief moment of insecurity that first time she had been naked in front of him but she could not recall the sensation she'd felt, the slight shrinking away of her flesh from his, for a split second, before her desire for him overtook her. Now she could not imagine feeling his bare skin against her and thinking it anything other than right.

"Mary," he groaned, as she pulled loose the first buttons on his shirt before pulling it from his trousers and pushing it up so he could tug it over his head.

The shirt was barely cast to the floor before he was straining to kiss her again, tugging down his trousers and hopping on one leg for a moment to remove his socks.

"Did you lock the door?" she said into the curve of his jaw as he held her against him, leaning her back onto the pillows at the head of the bed.

He grinned. "Never mind, get under the sheets."

"Richard!" She gave his chest a light hearted smack as he flung back the scarlet sheet and pulled it back over them so it fluttered in the air for a moment, heat rising from the bed.

He supported himself above her, the muscles in his arms straining so she felt the urge to sink her teeth into his flesh for a moment. He kissed her lightly on the lips and she gripped his biceps, piercing his skin with her nails and trying to pull him closer but he did not yield. She let her eyes flutter closed and gave herself over to experiencing every trace of his lips on her skin, every warm stroke of his breath. She did not think of the times he had lied, of the times she had seen a twist of his face she did not recognize, like a photograph where a likeness is not captured but distorted, overexposed, a bright spot exploding the image into a white bolt of light. Sometimes he was too bright, they were too sharply illuminated, and he blinded her until she saw nothing and only felt, felt how easily she could see into every corner of his soul if she would just look.

She could feel him now as he kissed the spot below her sternum before his breath wove a path downwards where he pressed his lips to her flat stomach and laid the palm of his hand there. A quiver travelled through her body and she clasped his arms, pulling him upwards so his face was over hers as she wrapped her legs around his back. She moaned and her breath seemed the only movement in the still air around them, the pounding heart of the room, as she felt a rush build and intensify and the blood begin to surge so her head throbbed. Their eyes locked as he reached one hand up to grab the carved headboard of the solid bedframe, a vein standing out in his bicep as he leant down on his other elbow. She bit down on her lip to prevent herself screaming as the aperture narrowed and the light faded so there was only this, only Richard moving inside her as everything else faded to black.


End file.
